Hans Peter Blankholm
Hans Peter Blankholm is professor of Archaeology at the University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway since 1994 and leader of the Joint Proxies Research Group. A Danish citizen, he got his doctoral degree at the University of Århus, Denmark, in 1991. Blankholm’s research interests include comparative hunter-fisher-gatherer archaeology in the northern and southern temperate and sub-arctic and arctic areas, with emphasis on social and economic relations. His research interests also include the development of analytical methods with emphasis on computer-based quantitative methods such as multivariate statistics, spatial analyses on both local and regional scales, geographical information systems (GIS), and artificial neural network based predictive modelling. Blankholm has recently been involved in three major projects: The IPY-SciencePub (Arctic Natural Climate and Environmental Changes and Human Adaptations: From Science to Public Awareness) project, the LARM (Landscape and Resource Management in Interior Arctic Norway 2500 BC – AD 1000) project, and the “Taking the North into Possession. The Early Settlement of Northern Europe – Economy, Technology and Society” project. Blankholm is a member of the scientific committee for the Earth and Environmental Sciences division of the European Academy of Sciences, a member of the Union Internationale des Sciences Préhistoriques et Protohistoriques (UISPP), a member of the Polar Archaeology Network (PAN) of which he was a founding member and chairman 2006-2012, and deputy-director of the Interuniversity Centre for the Study and Promotion of Prehistoric Cultures, Technologies and Landscapes – a cooperation between the University of Siena, the University of Rome (La Sapienza), and the University of Tromsø. He was elected one of 2000 outstanding intellectuals of the 21st century by the International Biographical Center, Cambridge England in 2005.
