recording and excavation, resulting in the accumulation of essential new knowledge on both detailed and comprehensive levels. The composition of settlement layers was recorded in terms of its archaeology, geology, and botany. Crumbling skeletal remains were exposed in graves with a brush or recorded by means of phosphate analysis. The use of machinery to uncover large surface areas also added to the knowledge of the nature of settlements, since it thereby became possible to expose whole villages. In this way the work of the Settlement Committee (established by the Research Council) was extremely important. Excavation activity also increased with the setting up of the Fortidsmindeforvaltning (Administration of Ancient Monuments), which began the excavation of endangered sites, or rescue archaeology, as laid down in a revision of the Act of Conservation in 1969.

The last two decades of the twentieth century saw the interlinked expansion and development of rescue archaeology and museums. Museums in Denmark took over the practical responsibility of carrying out all rescue archaeology. This initially caused expansion, but since the mid-1980s there has been stagnation. Because so many museums were involved and because a good number of them were small, the demands of modern, large-scale rescue excavations could not be met, and the museums were not helped by legislation, basically unchanged since 1969, that left postexcavation work unfinanced and unpaid for by private developers. (This legislation is about to be revised in accordance with the Malta Convention of the European Parliament.) As a result a large number of young Danish archaeologists migrated to find work in other countries, especially Norway and Sweden. Because rescue archaeology is the motor of the archaeological environment in all industrialized countries, Danish archaeology is now at a watershed. Will it reform legislation and the framework of rescue archaeology and enforce a new dynamic? Or will it remain within the traditional framework of museum archaeology?

Research Objectives and Milieus

Thomsen began a scientific tradition that was as important as his museum work in the development of archaeology in that he created a milieu for archaeological research—a precondition for the development and continuity of every field of study. This goal was reflected in his comprehensive correspondence, in which he shared all his knowledge and experience and thereby decisively influenced the development of museums and archaeology in Scandinavia.

An important figure in the field of scholarship at that time was Thomsen’s contemporary C. C. Rafn, who in 1825 was a founding member of the Society of Northern Antiquaries (it became a royal society three years later). Rafn was the prime mover in the society, which was to become the foremost scientific medium for Danish archaeology. Its growing membership, at home and abroad, helped to give Danish archaeology a prominent place during the middle and latter part of the nineteenth century. This was also the time when a special French edition of the society’s annual publication was issued (at that time French was the main language of Danish archaeology). The society published Icelandic manuscripts, partly for scholars and partly for the general reader. This effort soon gave the society a sound economic footing, which was further enhanced by the 1837 publication of the international best-seller Antiquitates Americanae. The society’s scholarly reputation, as well as its capital, increased steadily during the nineteenth century, partly because a growing proportion of its core membership consisted of scientists, heads of state, princes, and other prominent figures from all over the world. From 1832 on archaeology was represented in the periodical Nordisk Tidsskrift for Oldbyndighed, retitled Antiquerisk Tidsskrift after 1936. These journals were succeeded in 1866 by Aarbøger for nordisk Oldkyndighed. During their first few decades, however, they primarily served the study of history and philology. To change this situation required an improvement in the status of archaeology, reflected both in greater activity and in an archaeological objective defined in terms of social and cultural history. This change was brought about by Thomsen’s followers in the years after 1850, with Worsaae as the guiding spirit.

The ground had already been prepared in the 1840s when the young Worsaae elegantly refuted