Dr. M.(Marc) P. Hijma
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| Telephone number: | +31 (0)71 527 1680 |
| E-Mail: | m.p.hijma@arch.leidenuniv.nl |
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Archeologie Rapenburg 32 2311 EX Leiden Room number 0.03 |
| Personal Homepage: | leidenuniv.academia.edu/MarcHijma |
- Born in 1978, Hijma studied Physical Geography at Utrecht (MA 2002). After that he worked as a junior-researcher for Utrecht University and Rijkswaterstaat, focusing on sediment transport in rivers and on the beach. From 2004 to 2005 he worked as a junior project leader at an archaeological research company. In many parts of The Netherlands he conducted and led field research in areas that would be disturbed by infrastructural projects. He reconstructed palaeo-environments based on cores and had to advice and report on the chance that archaeological values were present.
Between 2005 and 2009 he worked on his Ph.D.-thesis From river valley to estuary: the early-mid Holocene transgression of the Rhine-Meuse valley, The Netherlands at the department of Physical Geography, Utrecht. This thesis describes the drowning of the Rhine-Meuse system in the western Netherlands between 10 and 6 thousand years ago. Melting of ice sheets and strong subsidence resulted in high rates of sea-level rise: on average 60 cm/century with a peak of 2 m/century. The shallow river valley transformed into an estuary. Using tens of thousands of cores, cone penetrations tests, seismic data and radiocarbon and OSL-dates, Hijma constructed several maps that show the transition in great detail.
Since October 2009 he works at Leiden University in the group of Wil Roebroeks. He will analyze existing seismic and core data from the North Sea to make archaeological expectancy scenarios. The maps benefit archaeological research, but are also used in planning locations for offshore sand mining. It is a joint research project with TNO Geological Survey of the Netherlands and Utrecht University.
