On the natural history of the peasant landscape

Abstract

Harm Tjalling Waterbolk (1924) is regarded, together with Pieter J.R. Modderman (1919) and Willem Glasbergen (1923–1979), as the direct inheritor of the founder of Dutch archaeology Albert Egges van Giffen (1884–1973). From the middle of the 1950s, after Van Giffen's retirement, thistroikashaped the rapidly growing academic archaeology in the Netherlands. Until well into the 1970s and 1980s they occupied the most prominent chairs at the universities of Groningen, Leiden and Amsterdam. One look at Waterbolk's impressive list of publications (almost exclusively articles) tells us that for half a century he has been an authoritative participant in developments in Dutch archaeology. He has been involved, directly or indirectly, in the modernization of excavation practices, in changes in the organization of academic education and research, in the introduction of new methods and techniques and in shifts in theory and interpretation. He has made a valuable contribution to the development of large-scale settlement research, to the shaping of the Dutch legal foundation of university education (the study of prehistory in theAcademisch Statuut), to the expansion of palynological research and the C14 method, and to the conceptualization of long-term continuity in the spatial organization of historical communities. His work is interesting because of the blending of a scientific interest in the history of the cultural landscape and a committed and critical involvement with the protection of such. Enough reasons to interview him ten years after his retirement. We meet Waterbolk in Meppel, a small town in south-west Drenthe, on one of the few hot days in the summer of 1996. It has been agreed that we will first pay a short visit to his birthplace in Havelte and to Van Giffen's grave in Diever. Before long it becomes clear that during the tour a web of named places and paths is gradually unfolding, each with its own historical tale and associated with personal memories. The afternoon is spent in the area between Balloo and Rolde, 5 kilometres east of Assen, the capital of the province of Drenthe. This area, which has an un-Dutch concentration of still existing and visible megalithic tombs, burial mounds, Celtic fields, and prehistoric roads, has recently become the subject of Waterbolk's interest (Waterbolk 1994a, and in press b).