Vincent MOM
(DPP Foundation, The Netherlands)
In the Netherlands, most larger cities have appointed a dedicated archaeologist who is responsible for the archaeological research into the specific past of this city and its close environments. But the smaller villages fall under the authority of the provincial archaeologist, a civil servant of which the Netherlands has a about a dozen: one for each province.
The first provincial archaeologists were appointed in the early sixties of the twentieth century, and in the province of Brabant, one of the southern Dutch provinces, this was Gerrit Beex. In his spare time, Beex had always been an enthousiastic amateur archaeologist and especially in nearby Belgium he had assisted in many excavations of prehistoric burial mounds. He worked in the furniture shop of his parents and after having delivered the merchandise with his big transporter bicycle, he would visit excavations and fellow amateur archaeologists and collect and deliver the finds. His formal education was limited to some art history, required for the statues of saints that were sold in the furniture shop. His patron prof. Glasbergen tried to persuade him to finish a study in history or archaeology, but Beex, by that time already provincial archaeologist, had no time for such academic endeavours. He also did not move to Amersfoort where the ROB (Dutch State Dept. for Archaeology) was (and is) established: it was more important for him to be close to the his excavations, instead of getting involved in the political intrigues at headquarters.
In 1977 he retired. He would have loved to continue, but he also deemed it important that young people would get an opportunity.
During his professional career Beex collected as much archaeological information about Brabant as he could. He would write this information on A5 archive cards, often supplemented with drawings, maps, reports and newspaper clippings. This archive was an important repository of data, being used by many people involved in the archaeology of Brabant. The names of several persons who now hold important places in the Dutch archaeological world do occur frequently in the archive. This archive now has been digitized, a relative simple but rewarding endeavour.
The archive is organized alphabetically by place name. There are about 4500 documents, most of them consisting of one card only. Each document has been digitized and has a corresponding keywords record in an .xml file. The keywords encompass place, period, materials, functions and document type. The data base can be queried through an HTML user interface and the idea is, whence the whole system has been checked and thoroughly tested, to put it on the Internet.
Keywords: archaeological documentation, archaeological archives, history of archaeology