Nobel Laureate H. de Vries to set up a carbon–14 laboratory at that university, to be partially paid for by the BAI. The first readings were taken in 1952.

Van Giffen became professor of archaeology at the University of the City of Amsterdam in 1940, and there he successfully set up the Institute of Pre- and Proto-history in 1951. The University of Amsterdam’s chair of (classical) archaeology was established in 1928, and its first incumbent, G.A.S. Snijder, founded the Allard Pierson Museum of Archaeology in 1934 to display the classical antiquities collections of Lunsingh Scheurleer and Allard Pierson. Snijder had good relations with Germany and also with top Nazis in Holland during the German occupation. Appointed director of the Dutch branch of a Nazi foundation in 1943, he was convicted and dismissed after the war and moved to Germany.

Van Giffen’s main contribution concerned the institutionalization of archaeological research in the country. In the years before World War II, several so-called recognized local institutions had started to dig for archaeological artifacts for local museums, and this practice was regarded as a threat to the archaeological record by the more responsible people in the RMO at Leiden, the BAI at Groningen, and the civil service in the Hague. In 1939, F.C. Bursch and W.C. Braat, keepers at the RMO, recommended curbing this unwanted development by centrally organizing excavations, administration, registration, and preservation of finds and sites.

The government accordingly set up a state committee, which came into office in 1940; Van Giffen, Byvanck, and Van Wijngaarden, director of the RMO, were on the board. The RMO was recognized as both the central national museum and excavator while the BAI was nominated to be the academic and national excavator; regional museums and others were supposed to cooperate with these major institutions on a voluntary basis. A small bureau was installed at the RMO to act as the executive branch of the committee, and it was headed by Bursch, who held firm Nazi convictions and was oriented toward Germany in scientific matters. Bursch wanted a field survey to set up an archaeological monuments list, after a German model developed in Bonn, but he could not control the National Archaeological Service and most people simply ignored him because of his political views.

After the war, it was clear that the impoverished country could not support several archaeological institutes, and Van Giffen considered his peripherally situated BAI particularly vulnerable. With strong support from the Monument Council and the new Government of Reconstruction, he worked to establish a centralized archaeological service to avoid a proliferation of archaeological institutes all over the country. The Archaeological State Service (Rijksdienst voor Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek, hereafter ROB) was finally established in 1947 at Amersfoort, a city between Leiden (RMO) and Groningen (BAI). Many of the service’s intended aims have never been fulfilled; it is neither the only excavator nor an archaeological educator. In fact, since 1961, excavation licenses have been issued by the Monument Council, and academic archaeological training has continued and expanded at the various universities.

Between 1945 and 1947, few archaeologists were interested in preservation, not even Van Giffen, and excavation was apparently considered the single most important task of the professional archaeologist. The Provisional Monuments Act (drawn up by the government in 1946 to protect historical and archaeological monuments) took the Dutch archaeological world by surprise. A Provisional Monuments Council incorporated the existing Archaeological State Committee and its bureau without notice. In 1961, this Provisional Act was replaced by a comprehensive Monuments Act in which archaeological interests were considerably expanded and registration of the archaeological heritage of the Netherlands became the responsibility of the ROB. To that end, ROB archaeologists were appointed in every Dutch province: they check development plans, are consulted by local authorities, and initiate rescue excavations if necessary.

As a result of the Monuments Act and the activities of the ROB, it dawned on local authorities that modernization and reconstruction in inner cities is fairly destructive of medieval remains above and in the soil. In several old cities, archaeologists