repertory. It remained in vogue in Dutch archaeology for many years, even with different epistemological props. In these larger ventures, ever more diverse phenomena were incorporated (ecology, locational analysis, historical traditions), and discussion thus moved on to more abstract levels.

In the 1970s, several young archaeologists produced less narrow texts: Bloemers and Willems and their work on Romanization have already been mentioned; Sander Van der Leeuw did comparative work on pottery production (Van der Leeuw and Pritchard 1984); and Jan Slofstra (1994) and Van de Velde argued for a social archaeology, the former with an evolutionist/functionalist emphasis (e.g., Brandt and Slofstra 1983), the latter being more structuralist (e.g., Van de Velde 1979). Later, two task groups (“pioneer programs”) were set up, one to work on political developments in the Iron Age, Roman, and early medieval periods as a historical anthropological exercise, the other to attempt to integrate earth sciences with anthropological notions of the Paleolithic period of northern Europe.

No matter whether there were written records or not, archaeology has probably always been understood as ancient history in the Netherlands. Views regarding the means to write that history have varied as have the understandings of how such a history should read. A kings-and-battles approach is not feasible, as was clear even to Reuvens; however, a bourgeois emphasis on “high culture” (art, literature) has hampered Dutch archaeological discussion. A more general approach has recently been gaining ground. The means to read ancient history through archaeology have also varied considerably, with emphasis swinging repeatedly from objects toward context and back, and from observation to inferences—the increasing efficiency of soil removal (in the early years by crofters, in the twentieth century by vast numbers of unemployed people and later by mechanical equipment and technicians), which resulted in an ever-larger scale of field operations, has been utilized primarily by the empirically minded.

Finally, a word or two should be said about present archaeological practice in the Netherlands. Theorizing (or general critical discussion) began when it became clear that there was no simple one-to-one correspondence between Dutch archaeological data and Dutch archaeological history—as was still assumed tacitly or openly in the major field projects of the 1970s and 1980s. Probably, it was a matter of reflexivity emerging from repression: the implications of fieldwork had been authoritatively taught to be straightforward (“This is no archaeology,” a comment by an archaeologist working on david l. clarke’s Analytical Archaeology, may be considered typical for much of Dutch archaeology until recently). In its turn, the self-perceived peripheral nature of Dutch archaeology can be invoked. Archaeology was considered either a handmaiden of ancient history, a collector of objects for art history, or a consumer of the advances in ecological research, in each of which the numbers of scholars were many times larger than all the archaeologists combined.

In other words, the referent groups, or the intellectual debates to which Dutch archaeologists used to refer to, were external to the discipline. The archaeologists were not in a position to contribute substantially to the core debates nor were they in a position to establish a general discussion of their own. Only when the number of archaeologists had crossed a quantitative threshold (Van der Leeuw 1994), could internal discussion become effective: first, through the full implementation of a complete archaeological training program in 1986; second, when in archaeological academia distinction could be obtained by the additional deployment of a perceptibly different outlook; and third, through the fierce competition for junior jobs when too many students to be employed archaeologically took their degrees in the period after 1975. The discussion has been channeled through a yearly congress on theoretical archaeology and communicated to a wider audience through a semiannual journal, Archaeological Dialogues, which was first issued in 1994.

Some Other Dutch Archaeological Enterprises

Apart from provincial Roman, classical, and prehistoric archaeologists, there were others interested