A tribute to Corrie Bakels on the occasion of her 65th birthday

Abstract

This is a special issue of Vegetation History and Archaeobotany (VHA) and therefore gets a special introduction: as some of you may realise, Prof. Dr. C. C. Bakels, Corrie to friends and colleagues, will celebrate her 65th birthday this year. We therefore thought it would be appropriate to honour her with this issue of VHA. It is composed of articles written by a selection of her students at Leiden University and from colleagues with whom she has co-operated closely. Of course there are many more students, friends and colleagues who could have contributed, but the number of pages available was limited! Corrie Bakels was born on the 17th of December 1942 in Heerlen, in the south of the Netherlands. She went to High School (Gymnasium B) and wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a mining engineer. During her Biology study at Leiden University, by pure coincidence (she was ‘‘filling in gaps’’ in her program) she became acquainted with archaeology. Shortly after her Cum Laude graduation in 1967, when she was working on water sewerage systems, Corrie was asked by Prof. Dr. P. J. R. Modderman to set up an archaeobotanical laboratory at the Institute for Prehistory at Leiden University. Starting with nothing but a chair, an empty desk and a bare bookshelf, she turned it into a prosperous unit. Her first important find was from Hienheim (Germany), where Prof. Dr. P. J. R. Modderman was excavating a Linear Bandkeramik (LBK) site. In the fills of pit 414 she saw charred peas and demanded that the contents should be sieved. This was the start of many samples to come! Pisum was not her favourite species though; Papaver came first and this was connected with her speciality: LBK. In May 1978, she defended her thesis entitled ‘‘Four Linear Bandkeramik sites and their environment’’. Soon she expanded both in period (Mesolithic up to modern Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00334-007-0117-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.