PDF file

Transcription

PDF file

News on the activities of the PalArch Foundation
Egypt in photographs (Z. Kosc)
Telling science (P. Shipman )
The history of the Palaeontological-Mineralogical
Cabinet of the Teylers Museum, Haarlem,
The Netherlands (J.C. van Veen)
The Natural Sciences Library of the Teylers
Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands
(M. van Hoorn)
Sex in the museum (V. van Vilsteren)
Archaeological illustration; combining ‘old’ and
new techniques (M.H. Kriek)
The pleasure of travelling to the past (C. Papolio)
The mammoths beneath the sea (D. Mol)
‘Archeologie Magazine’ in the electronic age
(L. Lichtenberg)
Colophon
volume 1, no. 1 (April 2004)
The PalArch Foundation’s Newsletter
In this special issue:
2
4
4
7
21
24
29
33
35
37
40
Edited by A.J. Veldmeijer, S.M. van Roode & A.M. Hense
© 2004 PalArch Foundation
Upper Room of the Library of the Teylers Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands (© Teylers Museum)
www.PalArch.nl
Newsletter 1, 1 (2004)
News on the activities of the PalArch
Foundation
New Newsletter
As promised, the new Newsletter is a
fact. From now on it is not only meant to inform
the members of the editorial and advisory
boards on the activities of the Foundation, but
to bring background information for them as
well as for the supporters of the Foundation!
We like to thank the contributors to this
issue as well as the persons involved in
checking English. Thanks also to Carlos
Papolio for allowing us to use one of his works
of arts as this issue’s watermark.
The official release of the first issue of
the Foundation’s magazine will be done by the
Dutch minister of Education, Culture and
Science (OCW) Mrs. M.J.A. van der Hoeven
on 3 April (see invitation) and is celebrated
with a small symposium called ‘Dinosaurs,
mummies and river dunes’. An elaborate report
will be included in the next Newsletter!
Monograph
The Foundation has developed ways to
publish monographs in digital as well as analog
formats, which do not differ from each other in
layout. However, in order to keep the price of
the analog as low as possible, the illustrations
are included on a CD; in the text clear
references will be made to the appropriate
illustration. For more information, see
http://www.palarch.nl/information.htm.
Supporter
It is possible to become supporter of the
Foundation and support, financially and
morally, the important work. This costs only
EURO 10. As a supporter, you will be sent by
email our Newsletter four times a year and you
will have a discount of 10% on all PalArch
products and registration fees. For more
details,
visit
http://www.palarch.nl/information.htm.
First issue
As mentioned previously, the first issue
of www.PalArch.nl is a special one, in which
 PalArch Foundation
the various members of the boards presents
themselves by publishing a paper, book review
or other contribution (see ‘Publications issue 1
(April 2004)’). Due to busy schedules, some
have not been able to meet the deadline, but
promised to submit a contribution for the next
issue (these are listed under the heading
‘Forthcoming’). Not all of them are listed here,
however. ‘#’ means that it was not yet known at
the time of printing the Newsletter.
Publications issue 1 (April 2004)
Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology
Harrell, J.A. 2004. Petrographic investigation of
Coptic limestone sculptures and reliefs
in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. –
PalArch,
series
archaeology
of
Egypt/Egyptology 1, 1: 1-16.
Andrews, C.A.R. 2004. An unusual inscribed
amulet. - PalArch, series archaeology of
Egypt/Egyptology 1, 2: 17-20.
Verhoogt, A.M.F.W. 2004. Family relations in
Early Roman Tebtunis. - PalArch, series
archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology 1, 3:
21-25.
Dieleman, J. 2004. Mysterious lands. By:
O’Connor, D. & S. Quirke. Eds. 2003.
(London, Cavendish Publishing Limited).
- Book review, PalArch, non scientific.
Roode, van, S.M. 2004. Never had the like
occurred. Egypt’s view of it’s past. By:
Tait, J. Ed. 2003. (London, Cavendish
Publishing Limited). - Book review,
PalArch, non scientific.
Roode, van, S.M. 2004. Affairs and scandals in
ancient Egypt. By: Vernus, P. 2003.
(Ithaca/London,
Cornell
University
Press). - Book review, PalArch, non
scientific.
Vertebrate palaeontology
Everhart, M.J. 2004. Late Cretaceous
interaction between predators and prey.
Evidence of feeding by two species of
shark on a mosasaur. – PalArch, series
vertebrate palaeontology 1, 1: 1-7.
Meijer, H.J.M. 2004. The first record of birds
from Mill (The Netherlands). – PalArch,
series vertebrate palaeontology 1, 2: 813.
2
www.PalArch.nl
Nieuwland, I.J.J.
nightmare:
2004.
A
taxonomical
Archaeopteryx,
Griphosaurus, Archaeornis. – PalArch,
series vertebrate palaeontology 1, 3: ##.
Veldmeijer, A.J. & A.M. Hense. 2004.
Supplement to: Pterosaurs from the
Lower Cretaceous of Brazil in the
Stuttgart collection, in: Stuttgarter
Beiträge zur Naturkunde, Serie B
(Geologie und Paläontologie) 2002, 327:
1-27. – PalArch, series vertebrate
palaeontology 1, 4: #-#
Lambers,
P.H.
2004.
Missing
links.
Evolutionary concepts & transitions
through time. By: Martin, R.A. 2003.
(Sudbury,
Jones
and
Bartlett
Publishers). – Book review, PalArch, non
scientific.
Storm, P. 2004. Fossil frogs and toads of North
America. By: Holman, J.A. 2003.
(Bloomington, Indiana University Press).
– Book review, PalArch, non scientific.
Signore, M. Exploratory excavations and new
insights on the palaeoenvironment of
Pietraroja.
Vos, de, J. Ice age cave faunas of North
America. By: Schubert, B.W., J.I. Mead
&
R.W.
Graham.
Eds.
2003.
(Bloomington, Indiana University Press).
– Book reviews, PalArch, non-scientific.
Archaeology of North West Europe
Veldmeijer, A.J. 2004. Return to Chauvet cave.
Excavating the birthplace of art. The first
full report. By: Clottes, J. Ed. 2003.
(London, Thames & Hudson). – Book
review, PalArch, non scientific.
Forthcoming
Clapham, A.J. Greek fire, poison arrows &
scorpion bombs. Biological and chemical
warfare in the ancient world. By: A.
Mayor.
2003.
(Woodstock/New
York/London, The Overlook Press). –
Book review, PalArch, non scientific.
Hoek Ostende, van den, L.W. & W. Kakebeke.
Results from the field campagnes in the
Tegelen Clay (1970-1977).
Nicholson, P.T. et al. [conservation of bronzes]
Nieuwland, I.J.J. 2004. African dinosaurs
unearthed. The Tendaguru expeditions.
By: G. Maier. 2003. (Bloomington,
Indiana University Press). – Book
reviews, PalArch, non-scientific.
Rose, P.J. Ancient Egypt in Africa. By:
O’Connor, D. & A. Reid. Eds. 2003.
London, Cavendish Publishing Limited).
– Book review, PalArch, non scientific.
3
www.PalArch.nl
Egypt in photographs
By Z. Kosc
Ababda Bedouins are driving their goats to where it is common and lopping off branches of acacia for
them, both leaves and young pods being eaten. Wadi Gemal, Eastern Desert, Egypt. Photography Z.
Kosc © 2004 (See too: http://puck.wolmail.nl/~kosc/Ababda folder/ababda.html).
Acacia Sayali
According to some Biblical scholars, the acacia tree is mentioned in the Bible (I will plant in the
wilderness... the Shittah tree. Isaiah 41), some even speculate that it was only natural that Moses
should turn to acacia when he came to build the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle and needed
beams and timber. The ancient Egyptians made coffins, some still intact, from the wood. The leaves
are important for forage and the wood for fuel where the trees are abundant. In the folk medicine the
gum is believed to be aphrodisiac, but is also is supposed to afford some protection against bronchitis
and rheumatism.
affects all of our lives. I want to root my stories
in my readers' and listeners' minds so deeply
that science will flourish there is perpetuity. To
Telling science
me, science is more than a body of knowledge,
it is a way of thinking. Born of curiosity,
By P. Shipman
nourished by discovery, science is a
marvellous way of finding things out, of making
It is my great pleasure to write this essay
sense of the world. Now, early in the 21st
for the opening edition of the PalArch
Foundation’s Newsletter because the purpose
century, I am ever more convinced that the
of this organization and its innovative journal
language of science is one in which we must
are close to my heart. I am one of those
all become fluent.
scientists who double as a science writer: that
One of the main reasons I think telling
is, one who writes science for non-scientists as
science is so vital comes from my research
well as for fellow scientists. I am deeply
background in human evolution. Since the
convinced that the ready dissemination of
evolutionary origin of the human species, our
science to the broader public is not only an
survival and well-being has depended upon
intellectual duty but also a moral one. This new
our abilities to observe, to analyse, to
journal promises to be a venue that will
synthesize, and to remember information about
encourage and promote telling science.
the world around us. Science is a way of doing
What is telling science? Telling science
that.
is the same as telling a story, except the
One of the capacities for handling
subject is a fundamentally important story that
information that marks modern humans is
4
www.PalArch.nl
language. Full, human language is an ability to
encode, decode, and share information that
goes well beyond the often-remarkable
capabilities of non-human animals to
communicate. Language is symbolic action.
Language is abstract; it is structured and it
possesses a class of words known as
disambiguators that makes the crucial
distinction between ‘I bite the tiger’ and ‘the
tiger bites me.’ Language includes the
important abilities to promise, cajole, threaten,
and paint imaginary scenarios. Language is
also an intrinsically social ability that involves
more than one person. Infants and children
who are, for some grotesque reason, deprived
of human companionship during a crucial
period of their development do not acquire any
semblance of full language even if they are
later rescued and taken into normal conditions.
Apparently, language cannot or does not
develop without the stimulation of someone to
talk to and with during a key period of brain
development. Language is not, then, simply a
collection of sounds or gestures with symbolic
meaning and rules for ordering those sounds
or gestures. Instead, language is an intricate
series of brain functions that are involved in
observing
and
storing
thoughts
and
information, translating them into symbols, and
being able to transmit them to another person,
whether or not that person shares the
experience or observation. The particular form
that any specific language takes is as variable
as human beings themselves.
Science is a sort of intellectual dialect,
not a true language in and of itself. Like any
living language, science is always changing
and evolving, which may cause discomfort to
the old-fashioned who adhere rigidly to rules.
Three crucial questions mark the mind of a
scientific thinker.
-- What do you know?
-- How do you know that?
-- What would change your mind?
I believe science offers us ways to seek
and gain understanding, which are profoundly
important aims. When I tell science, I am
seeking both to impart information and to teach
others how to ‘think’ science. It is a truism, and
even a truth, that any single piece of scientific
knowledge is subject to revision after more
evidence is gathered. Some use this premise
to argue that learning scientific ‘facts’ is
therefore a waste of time, since they are all
uncertain and will change eventually. I
disagree. There is a huge body of knowledge
so well supported, so thoroughly confirmed by
observations in numerous spheres, that it can
be accepted as true. Our airplanes fly because
of it; our light bulbs light; and, whether we
understand all the details or not, our chickens
lay eggs; our musicians exercise their vocal
cords and sing. The problem is simply that
reality is a wonderful and terrible and
complicated thing and we are not always smart
enough to grasp all its nuances at once. It is
wiser to allow for revision in case reality
becomes a little clearer in the future.
He or she who would write science takes
on a dual charge: to communicate scientific
knowledge and to show how science is done,
thus infecting the reader with the virus of
scientific thinking. There are many justifications
for this charge. One of them is that it is a duty.
A discovery unshared is lost. And if public
funds are used to further the discovery, then
certainly there is a moral obligation on the part
of those who accept the funding to transmit
their findings to the public. If science is able to
improve our world, either by making sense of
things or by allowing us to alter reality, then
science, like language, must be shared.
There is also a danger to exclusive,
hidden science. From the sinister medieval
alchemist, to the witch brewing her potions and
spells, to the mad scientist of the cinema, our
culture is replete with images of those who
hoard arcane knowledge and use it for their
own selfish means. People dislike and distrust
the possessors of powerful and secret
knowledge, with good reason. How are we as
scientists to quell or forestall that resentment
and suspicion? By telling science, of course.
Unfortunately, doing science often
requires developing an esoteric vocabulary,
learning
incomprehensible
procedures,
mastering Byzantine mathematical techniques,
and memorizing obscure acronyms. These are
all ways of concealing science, of shutting the
public out and keeping the precious
information for us, the scientists. Of course, if
scientists talk and think about ideas or entities
outside of the common experience, they must
invent new language. But there is no reason
that jargon must go unexplained, on the
contrary, it should not. The jargon itself is a
5
www.PalArch.nl
moat, the abstruse concepts a wall that
together keep the public from storming the
gates and taking possession of scientific
knowledge and practice. This is exactly the
opposite of what I would advocate.
I maintain that the deliberate failure to
explain scientific jargon, principles, and
discoveries to the general public is downright
wicked. The failure arises, I think, from a fatal
combination of arrogance and laziness, in the
presence of an unfortunate lack of empathy.
There is nothing I resent so fiercely as
someone who says, "It is too complicated for
you to understand; trust me."
I also think that concealing science and
making it exclusive are ultimately hostile to the
aims of science itself. Why do scientists do
science? Because science is fun, science is
cool, science is ‘about’ discovery. Who would
not want to share that with everyone who will
listen? Only those who need a secret password
to prove their own cleverness.
How many feel the need for such
exclusiveness has become patently clear in
recent months, when protests have been heard
against the nomination of Susan Greenfield, a
professor of neuroscience at Oxford University,
to be a Fellow of the Royal Society in the
grounds that she has often appeared on
television and in non-scientific publications as
an explainer of science. Her response to the
criticism is one I heartily endorse (MacLeod,
2004): “When it comes to engaging with the
public, many scientists would argue that they
do not have the time, the experience or,
indeed, the motivation to give talks to the great
unwashed. After all, it is no small feat to take
your life's work and passion and strip it of all
technical terminology and jargon to make it
accessible. It involves ignoring the peerrevered trees to reveal the entire wood to a
general audience in a clear, accurate and
appealing way. Small wonder that, until now,
such endeavours have been left to a small
minority of media-hungry... apostates who, in
the eyes of many 'normal' members of the
white-coat community, are marginalized as
'real' scientists.”
It is time for ‘real’ scientists to accept
their responsibility for learning to communicate
their work clearly and intelligently, and for the
scientific community to stop denigrating the
value of this difficult and essential endeavour.
If science is to be communicated, as I
believe it must, then how is it to be done? We
have all heard the words of scientists who think
they are communicating when in fact they are
speaking gibberish. They jabber away at us,
sighing wearily at the public's hopeless
ignorance and stupidity when we misconstrue
the few words and phrases we can recognize
out of the impenetrable jungle of nonsense.
These scientists have their hearts in the right
place but their heads in the wrong one. They
once learned this special language, this
framework of theories and techniques, and so
can the general public.
What is needed is transparency:
language that is so clear that it lets in the light
without our ever noticing its presence. How is
this to be achieved? Good will is not enough;
good sense must direct it. Those who write
science must start from a common frame of
reference, by beginning the story where we all
stand on the same ground.
There is considerably art and talent
involved in finding that common ground but it is
there for those who seek it. One of the first
steps that must be taken, one that is being
taken by the PalArch Foundation, is
legitimising and encouraging those who try to
communicate broadly and reach a bigger
audience. Another is to invest in a technique of
story-telling so simple and so powerful that it is
explained in the children's book Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
(Charles Dodgson): "Begin at the beginning...
and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
Cited literature
MacLeod, D. 2004. Royal Society split over
Greenfield fellowship. - The Guardian
(Feb. 6.).
Pat Shipman
Pennsylvania State University
University Park
PA 16802 USA
6
www.PalArch.nl
The history of the PalaeontologicalMineralogical Cabinet of the Teylers Museum,
Haarlem, The Netherlands
By J.C. van Veen
Introduction
In Haarlem, a town in the neighbourhood
of Amsterdam in The Netherlands, you will find
on the bank of the river Spaarne, a museum
with a bronze statue on its roof. The statue is a
huge angel who presents two laurel wreaths;
one to a figure with a painter’s brush and a
palette and one to a figure with a book. The
three are the symbols for fame, art and
science.
seems to overshadow the rest of the museum
such as the paintings (mostly from romantic
painters and from the Hague School), the
beautiful library with its magnificent books, the
Cabinet of Science with its copper and wooden
scientific instruments, the Numismatic Cabinet
with its medals and coins and also the
Palaeontological-Mineralogical Cabinet with its
fossils, minerals, crystals and rocks. However,
the drawings are mostly hidden in safes and
stockrooms, whereas the large number of
fossils, crystals, coins, instruments and
paintings, can be admired in their 18th and 19th
centuries, handmade furniture and showcases.
The museum is called ‘The Museum of
the Museums’, because of its preserved
exhibitions in their original 18th and 19th
centuries state. The recent 20th century
buildings are, fortunately, not disturbing the
atmosphere of old buildings; on the contrary,
they emphasize the old style.
The founder and his Foundation
Pieter Teyler van der Hulst, a rich
manufacturer of textiles, died in 1778 without
heirs. In his Will he founded the Teylers
Foundation (Teylers Stichting). Five friends of
his were appointed to be the directors of this
foundation. He also formulated the objectives
of his Foundation:
The front of the museum at the Spaarne
riverside (© Teylers Museum).
The museum in question, the Teylers
Museum, is most famous for its art and
especially the drawings, which include works of
Michelangelo (20 specimens) and Rafaël (16).
The complete collection consists of more than
1600 Italian works and many more old Dutch
(including all etchings of Rembrandt) and
French drawings. This wealth of drawings
Pieter Teyler van der Hulst
(© Teylers Museum).
(1702-1778)
7
www.PalArch.nl
1. Support the poor
2. Promote liberal theology
3. Promote arts and sciences
In order to support the poor the
Foundation founded the Teylers Almshouse, a
place where women over a certain age could
live.
In order to stimulate liberal theology they
founded the First or Divine Society (Het Eerste
of Godgeleerd Genootschap).
The Second or Physical Society (Het
Tweede of Natuurkundig Genootschap) was
founded to promote the arts and science. This
last society accomplished the building of a
Museum for Arts and Science, in order to fulfil
the objectives of Teyler’s Will.
Nowadays, the objectives seem an
extraordinary mix of charity, religion, science
and art. But Pieter Teyler was a Mennonite and
one of his ancestors, a tailor, left Scotland
because of his religion. Teyler was a prominent
member of the Mennonite Church and also
donated a lot of money to that church. The
Mennonite Church in Holland was very liberal.
They were open for all ideas of the Age of
Enlightenment and Teyler was very interested
in all the new ideas in art and science. He
would have been a member of the Dutch
Society
of
Science
(De
Hollandsche
Maatschappij der Wetenschappen) in Haarlem
if he was allowed. But in order to be a member
of that society one had to be a member of the
established Dutch Reformed Church. As a
consequence, he and his friends gathered
occasionally to see and discuss art and
science in his Gentlemen's Room, behind his
house.
The Oval Room designed by Leendert
Viervant, painted by Wybrand Hendriks, the
second ‘Chatelain’ of the museum (© Teylers
Museum).
observatory). Cupboards are made in the
walls, which are used as showcases on the
ground floor and as bookshelves on the first
floor. To access these bookshelves, you can
walk along the gallery (which is closed to the
public nowadays). In the beginning the
showcases were used to exhibit crystals and
fossils and in the middle of the room was a
table for physical experiments. Later the
showcases were stuffed with physical
instruments and the crystals and minerals
moved to showcases mounted on the
experiment table.
M. van Marum (1750-1837), the first Director
The Book and Art Hall or Oval Room
To understand why the Physical Society
founded a museum for both arts and science,
you should know that painters and sculptors at
the end of the 18th century also studied the
physical reality. Nowadays a drawing often is
called a study, but in those days science was
an art; a free art. So the big oval room, the
oldest part of Teylers Museum was called the
Book and Art Gallery (De Boek- en Konstzael).
It was a high hall, built in an early Dutch neoclassical style, with light only from above
through windows immediately below the roof
(which is adorned with an astronomical
The scholar Dr. Martinus van Marum, the first
director of Teylers Museum 1784-1837
8
www.PalArch.nl
Martinus van Marum (1750-1837) was a
student and family friend of Petrus Camper, the
famous scholar of comparative anatomy in
zoology and botany and professor at
Groningen University. Van Marum made two
dissertations, one on the movement of juices in
plants and one on the movement of juices in
the animal body compared with those in plants.
The Second Fossil Room with Mosasaurus
hoffmanni, the jaws of the mosasaur from the
collection of Major Drouin purchased by Van
Marum in 1784 (© Teylers Museum).
He was promised the Chair in botany
at Groningen University, but the Board of the
University appointed a fellow-student of his
instead. Van Marum felt unappreciated and left
in anger for Haarlem, where there was a
science loving upper class. In 1776 he settled
as a physician and became a member of the
Dutch Society. A year later he was appointed
Director of the Natural History Cabinet of the
Society, and the city of Haarlem appointed him
as a public lecturer in mathematics and
philosophy. In 1779 he was admitted to the
Second Society of Teylers Foundation and
immediately gained great influence in the
discussions on the new Museum. Van Marum
was appointed to be the first director and
librarian of the Museum after the Oval Room
was finished in 1804.
Van Marum proposed to purchase
anything excavated (such as minerals and
fossils) for the showcases. In 1782 he had
already bought some fossils in Maastricht for
the Society, during his honeymoon trip! In 1784
he bought the first jaws of the ‘Animal de
Maestricht’, now named mosasaur, and the
complete fossil collection of Major Drouin,
consisting of fossils from St. Peter’s Mountain
in Maastricht, Limburg, The Netherlands. In
1784 he purchased a complete collection of
crystals, minerals, rocks and fossils at an
auction in Amsterdam.
He gave lectures on geology and other
earth sciences but understood that his
knowledge in this field was limited. Therefore
he travelled through Europe to meet scholars
in the fields of geology, petrology, mineralogy,
crystallography and palaeontology to discuss
their fields of research. He also purchased
fossils and casts, rocks and minerals, crystals
and crystal-models from them.
Also the study of physics was on his
agenda and he started physical experiments in
the Teylers Museum. Thus he established a
sort of ‘empire of science’; he had a hortus
botanicus, was director of the Natural History
Museum of the Dutch Society and a geological
and physical museum (Teylers). What was
lacking was a zoological garden, but
nevertheless, Teylers could measure itself
against collections in cities such as Paris and
London. Even Napoleon Bonaparte was so
impressed that he made plans to dismantle the
Oval Room to rebuild it in Paris. Fortunately,
his plans never came to fruition…
Though Van Marum spent nearly twice
as much on the purchase of scientific
instruments than on minerals and fossils, he is
nevertheless responsible for nearly all
minerals, rocks and crystals in the collection
and laid the foundations of the palaeontological
collection by obtaining the most important
fossils, among which are the previous
mentioned jaws of the mosasaur. Van Marum,
Left. Pear-wood crystal-models according the
Abbot Rene Just Hauÿ. Van Marum purchases
about 600 of them in 1802. The collection is
still almost complete (© Teylers Museum).
Right. The mammoth skull purchased by Van
Marum for the Dutch Society of Science in
1824. In 1886 it came to the new museum
9
www.PalArch.nl
who published this ‘Grand Animal de
Maestricht’, regarded it as a whale, following
the ideas of his professor, Petrus Camper. He
concluded: "It could be a whale, but not a
whale or dolphin we know. The shells from the
St. Peter’s Mountain are very different from the
shells in the collection of the Natural History
Museum too." He did not conclude that this
animal was extinct. Later his close friend
Adriaan Gilles Camper, son of Petrus Camper,
suggested that the animal was a giant monitor
sea-lizard and contributed thus to the idea of
his tutor, George Cuvier, that animals could
become extinct.
Another important fossil, purchased by
Van Marum in 1802 on his longest journey,
was the ‘Homo diluvii testis et theoscopus’
(‘The Man who witnessed the Flood and who
saw God’). He bought it from the grandchildren
of Johann Jacob Scheuchzer in Zurich. But in
1811 Cuvier proved, after preparing the
forefeet, that the fossil was the remains of a
giant salamander. The labour of Cuvier is still
visible in the fossil!
Homo dilluvii testis et theoscopus’ (‘The Man
who witnessed the Flood and saw God’). A
giant-salamander found in 1725 in the
freshwater limestone quarry of Oeningen.
Described by Johann Jacob Scheuchzer in his
Physica Sacra (Holy Physics). George Cuvier
unmasked ‘The Man of the Flood’ by preparing
its forelegs (© Teylers Museum).
The last instance of an important fossil
purchased by Van Marum is the skull of a
mammoth. Initially, the directors of Teylers
Foundation did not show much interest but Van
Marum, more passionate for fossils than ever
before, furiously bought the piece for the
Natural History Museum. Years later, when this
Museum was closed, the skull came to the
new wing of Teylers Museum, but that was
long after the death of Van Marum in 1837.
J.G.S. van Breda (1788-1867), the second
Director and collector.
Gaining and losing
In 1839 professor Jacob Gijsbertus
Samuël van Breda succeeded Van Marum. He
graduated as a physician and a philosopher,
he started his career in 1816 as a professor at
the Atheneum of Franeker in botany, chemistry
and pharmacy. In 1821 he married the
daughter of the Rector of the Atheneum,
Adriaan Gilles Camper. The same year (this
was after the unification of the northern and
southern Netherlands), he was appointed
professor at Ghent University (now in Belgium)
in botany, zoology and comparative anatomy.
He also became the Keeper of the natural
history collections of this University and added
a lot to its collections.
In addition Van Breda was appointed as
a member of the Commission for the
Geological and Mineralogical Map of the
Southern Netherlands in 1825. In fact he was
the leading geologist who inspected the
Prof. Dr. J.G.S. van Breda, director of Teylers
Museum 1839-1867 (© Teylers Museum).
10
www.PalArch.nl
The holotype of Pterodactylus crassipes
appeared to be the first ever found fossil of
Archaeopteryx. Archaeopteryx lithographica,
the fourth discovered specimen of the primeval
bird has teeth and a reptile tail, but feathers
like birds (© Teylers Museum).
samples collected by two military officers who
were responsible for the survey.
His star at the University was rising. He
was already appointed as Rector of Ghent
University when he had to escape to the north
because of the Belgian Revolt in 1830. Back in
Holland he was appointed as a professor at
Leiden University in geology and zoology.
In 1838 Van Breda was appointed
Secretary of the Dutch Society and, in 1839,
Director of Teylers Museum. He knew from his
experience in Belgium how important the role
of fossils was for geology and that stimulated
him to purchase many fossils for the collection.
It was important that he had plenty of room for
them; Van Marum had a small Fossil Room
built in 1827, which is now the Numismatic
Cabinet. In 1838, a new Paintings Room was
built next to the Fossil Room so a big room
was empty and suitable for a large collection;
this became the Large Stone Room (De
Groote Steenenkamer).
Van Breda spent more than twice as
much money purchasing fossils as Van Marum
had done, but only half the amount of money
for scientific instruments. He had the first
choice in fossils of the freshwater limestone
quarry in Oeningen. He obtained four more
giant salamanders and hundreds of fossil
fishes, insects, frogs, crabs, a snake, turtles
and remains of mammals (among which the
bones and tusks of an elephant) and leaves in
concurrence with the Zurich professor Heer,
who described them. This way professor Heer
and Van Breda sponsored the quarry in
Oeningen, which at that time was famous as
the quarry of ‘The Man of the Flood’. When
they stopped sending money the owner had to
close it.
More fossils were obtained from different
quarries
in
the
Altmühltal,
Germany,
predominantly fossil fishes and insects. But the
most valuable collection was bought from the
well-known fossil merchant Krantz in Bonn. It
was the collection of flying and other reptiles
described by Hermann von Meyer in ‘Fauna
der Vorwelt’. Later, in 1970, professor John
Ostrom from Yale University, USA, discovered
that one of them was the first found fossil of
Archaeopteryx lithographica. So, huge fossils
from ichthyosaurians and crocodiles, all marine
reptiles from Baden-Württemberg, Germany,
covered the walls and Van Breda had bought,
again via Krantz, a seacow and an archeocete,
the first found complete skull of Zeuglodon
macrospondylus being the holotype of
Zeuglodon hydrarchus, from the badlands of
Alabama. This specimen however, should
have been determined as Zeuglodon
brachyspondylus and its name is now Zygoriza
kochii.
Van Breda purchased many fossils for
Zygorhiza kochii, holotype of Zeuglodon
hydrarchus, an old whale from the Eocene of
Alabama in the showcase. Below that, the
model of Dorudon atrox, a more primitive
whale from the Fayum, Egypt, which was
exchanged by Dubois for a cast of the
Zygorhiza kochii (© Teylers Museum).
11
www.PalArch.nl
the Cabinet, but had no time to describe them
because of his appointment as Chairman of
the Commission for the Dutch Geological Map.
This commission needed a lot of fossils and
minerals to compare with the samples found in
the field. Of course the books in the library and
the collection of fossils in Teylers Museum
played an important role in dating the
geological layers, but the commission also
collected fossils for their own museum in
Haarlem. In order to describe Dutch fossils, the
complete collection of reptile bones, which
Petrus Camper bought in 1782 from the widow
of J.L. Hoffman, was brought from Groningen
University to Haarlem.
Van Breda was not, as in Belgium,
considered the most important geologist.
Instead, his former student Dr. W.C.H. Staring,
was appointed Secretary at the Commission.
Staring drew all the work to himself. Van
Breda, who had also quite a lot of reptile
bones in his own collection as well as in
Teylers Museum, tried to work with this
material, but this work was already promised to
professor H. Schlegel in Leiden. As a
consequence, feelings of concurrence and
envy disturbed the activities of the
Commission, until it fell apart. Staring finished
the job on his own.
The condition of the Museum of Natural
History of the Dutch Society was dreadful;
leaking water from the roof was destroying the
collection. The collection itself was badly
documented and incomplete. So, in 1866 the
oldest Natural History Museum (1759) in the
Netherlands was closed and the collection was
divided over different institutions; the fossils
and minerals went to Teylers Museum.
But the situation in Teylers Museum was
also bad; Van Breda started to catalogue but
did not complete it because of his numerous
acquisitions. A lot of this material was not
described and as Secretary of the Dutch
Society he offered a prize for the description of
the fossil fishes of Oeningen. The man who did
this job was his successor at the Teylers
Museum, Tiberius Cornelis Winkler.
After his death in 1867 Van Breda's own
collection was first offered to Teylers Museum
but not accepted because of the price of 2000
Dutch guilders (Van Breda's year salary was
1400 Dutch guilders!). Consequently, the
collection became divided and A.S. Woodward
of the Museum of Natural History in London
bought the best fossils for 450 Dutch guilders.
Woodward also arranged the purchase of
fossils by Cambridge University from the Van
Breda collection. The rest was donated to
Teylers Museum, leading to the third
supplement on the catalogue of Winkler.
Tiberius Cornelis Winkler (1822-1897),
Registrar and first Curator.
Catalogues and supplements
Dr. Tiberius Cornelis Winkler started
work immediately after his primary schooling
with a job as a warehouse clerk. In the evening
he studied French, German and English in
such a way that he read, spoke and wrote
fluently. His life changed when he got married.
His brother-in-law studied medicine at
Groningen University. This man encouraged
him to study Latin and physics at the Clinical
School in Haarlem.
He settled as a physician in a small
fishing village. There he became interested in
fish, because one of his patients was stung by
a weever, a stingfish. It appeared to be a
serious case. Winkler became curious about
Dr. T.C. Winkler, the first Curator 1867-1897
made 6 catalogues and 5 supplements for the
collection. Translated in 1861 Darwin’s ‘Origin
of Species’, wrote many popular scientific
books and articles about fossil and living
creatures (© Teylers Museum).
12
www.PalArch.nl
this fish and in 1856 he went to the library of
the Teylers Museum for literature. There he
met Van Breda, who helped him. He asked
Winkler to write an article on the weever for the
popular magazine on natural history Van Breda
and others had founded in 1852, the ‘Album of
Nature’ (‘Album der Natuur’). So a fruitful
collaboration began between the old scholar
and the autodidact. He became a regular
author in the Album (more than 50 articles). I
imagine that the conversation with Van Breda
lead to the idea to translate Darwin's ‘Origin of
Species’ into Dutch. So already in the 1860s
the Dutch people could read the revolutionary
ideas of Darwin in their own language. Van
Breda asked Winkler to describe the fossil
fishes of Oeningen for the prize of the Dutch
Society. He did, and in 1861 it was finished
and published. Then Van Breda asked him to
do the same for the fishes of Solnhofen. He
did, and in 1862 it was finished and published.
The Board of Directors of the Teylers Museum
was offered a nomenclature, a list of all the
fishes with their Latin names classified in a
French system according to Pictet's Traité de
Paléontologie .
The directors of the Teylers Foundation
were very pleased with the careful and
systematic work of Winkler and asked him to
make a catalogue of the complete collection.
Winkler started the catalogue and in 1863 the
first volume, on the Palaeozoic fossils, was
ready. His concept was very well considered.
He first went to professor Harting, a member of
the Commission of the Dutch Geological Map,
for advice. Harting told him to number all the
objects immediately when he found them. He
also told him to divide the catalogue in three
parts Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cainozoic,
and to start with the simplest creatures.
Furthermore, Harting told him to use a
handbook for this classification and he
recommended Pictet. The first volume was a
success and Winkler sent it to well known
palaeontologists. Professor Bronn reviewed it
in Neues Jahrbuch für Mineralogie, saying "...
indeed one can introduce this Catalogue as an
example for all similar labour ..." (translated).
Groningen University honoured him by offering
him a honorary degree, also because of his
translation of important books in 1864 and the
Teylers Foundation honoured him with an
appointment as the first Curator of the
This holotype of Pterodactylus micronyx was
part of the collection of Hermann von Meyer
and was described by Winkler (1870)
Palaeontological-Mineralogical
Cabinet
in
1867.
The catalogue came out in six volumes;
the last one in 1868. As the work was just
finished, Winkler discovered the first collection,
purchased from Major Drouin, in a cupboard
outside the Fossil Rooms! So he had to make
the first supplement to the catalogue in 1868,
immediately after the catalogues proper were
finished. Even more fossils came in and other
should go; the collection of fossil reptiles of
Petrus Camper - Hoffmann's collection had to
go back to Groningen. Fortunately, ‘ My friend
Staring’, as Winkler used to put it, made that
the fossils could stay in Teylers Museum, first
on loan, then permanently. Winkler became
interested in turtles, not only because of the big
turtle Chelonia hoffmanni now Allopleuron
hoffmanni, but also because of the various
fossil turtles in the collection; his book on
turtles was finished in 1869.
New books and new insights made a
revision necessary and the last supplement,
the fifth, appeared in 1896, a year before he
died. True, this might be regarded as a dull and
boring, but necessary job, and Winkler had
other things to do too. He learned ten more
languages, among which was Volapuk (the
precursor of Esperanto), but also articles and
books had to be written. He loved to write
informative books for interested people and to
illustrate them with humorous and romantic
stories. He got his chance when the New
Museum was built. Only one fossil was
purchased for the New Museum, an almost
13
www.PalArch.nl
skeleton
of
Plesiosaurus
dolichodeirus from the Lias limestone of Lyme
Regis, Great Britain. This largest object in the
collection was the first fossil placed in the new
First Fossil Room. All the fossils had to be
replaced in showcases and drawers and
Winkler complained that he became short of
space to store it. Winkler did suffice to write the
new position of the fossils in his old catalogues
and supplements and he wrote a ‘Guide for the
Visitor’ in Dutch and French. All his talent in
storytelling could be used and all his narratives
told. “In 1863 Professor Van Beneden from
Belgium came to see the Zeuglodon
macrospondylus (Archaeocete VV) and
pointing at the nostrils he cried: "... c' est un
phoque monsieur, je vous assure c'est un
phoque!"” (it’s a seal sir, I assure you it’s a
seal). Cleverly Winkler declared it was a
seacow.
Winkler also retold the story of
Solomon's judgment. In a cellar in Paris a huge
bone of a whale was discovered. Van Marum
and Cuvier both wanted it and to avoid an
escalation in the price they decided to divide it.
So they asked for a carpenter with a saw.
When the carpenter was already sawing,
Cuvier could not bare it and left the fossil to
Van Marum. But…although Cuvier was a real
palaeontologist he was only a child in 1796!
When in 1896 the medical officer
Eugène Dubois brought Winkler a cast of
Pithecanthropus erectus (the Java man and
then considered the missing link between man
and ape and the utter proof that Darwin was
right about the descent of man) Winkler felt
honoured and the story he wrote about this
fossil was one of his last.
complete
and to find fossils. His father was willing to tell
all the stories about his findings. Then the time
came for him to go to high school. Normally a
Roman Catholic father would have chosen a
Roman Catholic Latin School, but he chose a,
in that time very modern type of school, the
HBS (Higher Citizens School) in Roermond.
There, young Eugène got involved in
discussions on evolution versus creation and
‘The Descent of Man’. The false arguments of
his teacher in German language convinced him
of the opposite. Later he recounted the
comments of his teacher ‘Affen bauen keine
Kathedrale!’ (‘Apes do not build cathedrals’).
After high school Dubois went to
Amsterdam University to study medicine. He
was very interested in anatomy and when he
finished his studies he became assistant to the
professor in anatomy and teacher at the
Academy of Art in Amsterdam. One year later
he was appointed lector in anatomy and was a
candidate to succeed his professor.
Suddenly, Dubois ended his career and
went to the Dutch Indies as a medical officer.
No one could understand this decision,
because ‘only unsuccessful doctors went to the
Indies’, as was the common thought. Dubois
learned from the books of Heackel that ‘the
missing
link’,
the
link
between
Eugène Dubois (1858-1940)
The ‘missing link’
Marie Eugène François Thomas Dubois
was born in 1858, a year before ‘The Origin of
Species’ and he grew up in a Roman Catholic
family. His father was the chemist of Eysden, a
village on the banks of the river Maas. When
young Eugène looked out of his bedroom
window he could see the St. Peter’s Mountain
on the opposite bank of the river. The young
boy loved to stray with his father through the
Limburg landscape to collect medicinal herbs
Prof. Dr. Eug. Dubois (1858-1940) (© Teylers
Museum).
14
www.PalArch.nl
Dubois, on the right with fringe, without
moustache, went to the Dutch Indies as a
medical officer to do scientific research
(© Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum,
Naturalis).
ape and man, could be found on a place where
currently ape and man are living. He asked the
government for money to organize an
expedition to Africa, to the place where gorillas
and chimpanzees were to be found. The
government refused. Then he realized that in
the Dutch Indies man and ape (the orangutan), are found too and going there without
high costs was only possible by joining the
colonial army. Perhaps he knew that the army
also did some scientific work on expeditions
‘terra incognita’.
In the Indies, Dubois was first
commissioned at a hospital on Sumatra. There
was no time for fossil hunting, but he wrote an
article, ‘About the desirability of an
investigation of the diluvial faunas of the Dutch
Indies, especially Sumatra’ (translated). He
asked for a transfer to a small hospital, where
he had time to examine caves. He found
fossils, not only bones from elephants, tapirs,
pigs and cows, but also from gibbons and
orang-utans. With these fossils and with
support from the world of science Dubois could
convince his superiors. In 1888 he got a
commission
to
do
palaeontological
investigations on Sumatra and Java. He also
got two sergeants to his command and the
labour of fifty convicts. He found some other
caves on Sumatra with the same fossils and
then he explored Java. One of the reasons of
doing this was the discovery of a skull of the
Wadjak-man on Java. Dubois identified this as
from another human race than was then living
on Java, but also saw that this was not the type
of skull he was looking for. Work began on
Java with caves too, but quickly they started
excavation in the Kendeng hills. In the dry
season, when the ground was covered with
leaves, they went to the river Solo, near Trinil.
The high walls of the bank of this river were full
of fossils, but in the wet season the water was
too high to work there. So the two sergeants
and their convicts swapped over from one
locality to the other and Dubois came to look at
the fossils from time to time.
One day, just at the end of the dry
season, one of the sergeants told him they had
found the carapace of a tortoise. When Dubois
saw it he was thrilled, this was what he was
looking for – not a tortoise, but the cap of a
very primitive skull. But when he studied the
skull during the wet season, he hesitated, it
was too ape-like. So he started an article on
this fossil, which he named Anthropopithecus
(= ape-man). When the dry season returned,
the convicts continued their job and twelve
meters from the place where the upper part of
the skull was found, they discovered a human
femur. The anatomist Dubois at once saw that
this creature walked upright and never
hesitated that this bone belonged to the same
individual as the skull cap. So in his description
of 1894 he changed the name in
Pithecanthropus erectus (= man-ape), a name
already given by Heackel to his hypothetical
ancestor of mankind; Dubois found the
‘missing link’.
In 1894 he went back to The
Netherlands, where the debate over his finds
The skull cap and femur of Pithecanthropus
erectus Dubois, 1894, now Homo erectus, the
Java-man excavated near Trinil from the bank
of the Solo-river at Java (RI) (© Nationaal
Natuurhistorisch Museum, Naturalis).
15
www.PalArch.nl
was going on as it was in the rest of Europe.
The common opinion was that the skull and the
femur were not from the same individual and
also not from the same species. They could not
imagine that in most circumstances fossil
bones of one individual do not stay together
but become dispersed by other animals or by
flowing water; most of the comparative
anatomists studied complete skeletons and not
isolated bones.
Dubois was appointed Director over his
collection in the State Museum of Natural
History in Leiden and lived in The Hague. In
Leiden he had all kinds of fossils and
skeletons, which he could compare with the
more than 20.000 fossils he found in the
Indies. Amsterdam University honoured him by
offering a honorary degree in 1897 and Dubois
moved with his family to Haarlem in the same
year.
In 1899 he became a professor in
geology and crystallography at Amsterdam
University and the successor of Winkler, the
Curator of the Palaeontological-Mineralogical
Cabinet at the Teylers Museum.
The first activity at the Teylers Museum
was to prepare fossils of mosasaurs (maybe to
gain experience to empty the part of the skull
of the Pithecanthropus, because he was
interested in the inside of the skull, the
endocranium). He compared endocranial casts
from different fossils. In the Teylers Museum is
a collection of casts of fossil hominids, mostly
Neanderthals, but also from Australopithecus.
There are endocranial casts of all the skulls as
well.
clay-pits in Tegelen. One of the directors,
August Canoy, the nephew of Dubois’ wife,
was willing to help him to get a collection from
the clay-pits. Dubois paid the workmen to save
the bones (they normally threw the bones back
in the pits). Canoy arranged also that an older
collection of bones would be transferred to the
Teylers Museum. In this way, Dubois was able
to establish a large fossil collection including
two species of deer, two rhinos, a large horse,
two beavers, a hippopotamus (which later
proved to be a pig), a white-tailed eagle, a
tortoise and a pike. Unfortunately, what he had
hoped for did not turn up: a fossil of the first
man of Limburg.
Dubois, being a geologist, was curious
about the thickness of the layer of clay and the
layers underneath. Paid for by the Teylers
Foundation, he set a borehole in the Canoy
quarry and found a base with gravel on which
he situated the Tiglian in the Pliocene era. In
doing so, Dubois postulated a tertiary Ice-age.
This resulted in a huge discussion with people
of the Dutch Geological Survey who defined all
the Ice-ages to the Pleistocene era and until
today the Tiglian in The Netherlands is situated
in the Pleistocene era, while in other countries
it is of Pliocene age!
Dubois and his assistants
Dubois bought only one really
important large fossil for the collection. In 1914
Dubois and the fossils from the clay-pits of
Tegelen
The most important work Dubois did at
the Teylers Museum was collecting fossils from
Tegelen, a location near the German border
and which had a ceramic industry continuing
from Roman times onwards. In the quarries,
the bones of Trogontherium, a beaver, were
abundant. The Germans spoke about
‘Trogontheriumtone’. Dubois heard already
about these fossils in 1897, but in 1903 he
travelled with two students to the St. Peter’s
Mountain (where he purchased fossil driftwood
with borings of mollusks). On his journey he
visited the firm Canoy-Herfkens, working at the
Antlers
of
the
great
deer
of
Tegelen,
Eucladoceros tegulensis (Dubois, 1904), junior
synonym of Eucladoceros ctenoides. Dubois,
using nails, bamboo-pins and gypsum,
restored the right antler. Professor Schaub in
Basel modelled the left one in 1947 (© Teylers
Museum).
16
www.PalArch.nl
he obtained an Ichthyosaurus communis “mit
Hauterhaltung” (‘with preserved skin’), from
one of the Posidonian-slate quarries in
Holzmaden, Germany. Dr. H.C. Bernhard Hauff
himself prepared this fossil. The rest he
purchased were casts or fossils, mostly for his
own studies.
Dubois had three jobs and for each one
he had an assistant. In Amsterdam, Antje
Schreuder did most of Dubois’ work as a
professor. She also managed the collection of
Tegelen, which Dubois collected with his
students, and she became a specialist in the
small mammals of Tegelen (humorously she
called this ‘waistcoat pocket’ palaeontology). In
Leiden he had an assistant too, Father J.A.A.
Bernsen, who was a Roman Catholic priest.
Bernsen catalogued the fossil collection from
the Dutch Indies. Both received their doctor's
degree on the Tegelen fossils. Father Bernsen
specialised on the rhinos and Antje Schreuder
on the beavers. The Teylers Foundation paid
Bernsen’s publication (1927) and Schreuder
published in the ‘Archives Teylers ‘ (1928). In
about 1920 Dubois got an assistant at the
Teylers Museum, Mrs. Lobry-de Bruijn. She
had a special job: to make explanatory texts to
accompany the fossil displays. The large texts
in the showcases are from that time. The rough
copies are still in the collection. No sentence
stayed the same, Dubois corrected every word.
When you see that, it is hard to understand
why he did not do the work himself; this way
the job would have taken one year (which he
asked for) instead of the three years it actually
took!
So his assistants did the bulk of Dubois’s
work. Dubois loved to be in Haarlem, walking
in the dunes and to be with his collection at the
Teylers Museum. He also enjoyed meeting
other scholars like professor H.A. Lorentz , the
Nobel Prize winner who had
his own
laboratory at the Teylers Museum.
In 1906 Dubois bought badlands near
Haelen in Limburg, not far from Tegelen. In the
beginning he had a simple shed in which he
lived, unconventionally and mostly alone. The
people in the region called him ‘the beggar’
and so he named his mansion, which he built
later, ‘De Bedelaer’ (‘The Beggar’). He asked
his students to come there to do their
preliminaries and sometimes, when the
weather was bright and the water warm, they
swam together in the fen during the exams. In
the meantime, Dubois tried to improve the poor
water quality with guano from bats. Near the
fen was a huge tower for bats, behind his
mansion was a smaller one whilst the tower of
the building was used for bats too. He was the
first to discover the nutrification of freshwater
by pollution.
The wandering of Pithecanthropus erectus
The
discussion
about
the
Pithecanthropus erectus was hushed after
1900, when Dubois showed the hominid at the
World Fair in Paris. Dubois was done with all
the critics and misunderstandings. He became
paranoid and dug a hole under his table in the
kitchen to hide his hominid fossils and had no
place to show them! He slept with a pistol
under his pillow, afraid of ‘creationist burglars’.
When scientists asked to study the skull and
the other hominid fossils, he answered that he
had no place to show it. They complained to
the Directors of the Teylers Foundation and in
1923 the Directors procured a safe for the
fossils in the Teylers Museum. When they
heard about this in Leiden, they claimed the
fossils, because they were excavated in
military service and thus State property. One of
his assistants, professor Brongersma, retold
the event of bringing the fossils to Leiden.
Here, one assistant walked in front and another
assistant bearing a box with the skull followed.
Behind them came Dubois with his pistol in the
pocket of his coat. This strange group walked
through Haarlem and got on the train to the
State Museum of Natural History in
The tomb of Dubois at the graveyard in Venlo
near Tegelen, The Netherlands (© J.C. van
Veen).
17
www.PalArch.nl
Leiden. The fossils are still in the same safe,
because the directors of the Teylers
Foundation, as good losers, granted the safe to
the Leiden Museum as well.
Dubois continued to be Curator until his
death in 1940, but for years he did not go to the
Teylers Museum. He died in Haelen and is
buried in the graveyard in Venlo, in the
Protestant part in non-consecrated soil; he was
not welcome in the Roman Catholic section.
When I saw his tomb I was astonished, he lies
beneath a big rectangular stone with his name,
Prof. Dr. Eug. Dubois. He lost his Christian
names and above this was the ‘Pirate Ensign’ –
the ‘Jolly Roger’ - two crossed bones with the
part of the skull of Pithecanthropus erectus, the
Java-man, the ‘missing link’.
World War II, an interregnum
During World War II Cornelis Beets was
the
curator
of
the
PalaeontologicalMineralogical Cabinet. The museum was
closed. The showcases were covered with
sandbags protecting the objects against shells
from bombing, which fortunately never came.
The only feat of arms of this geologist was to
look for people who could describe the bones
from Tegelen he found in boxes and baskets in
all kind of places. Antje Schreuder was one of
them and also Dick A. Hooijer. Later, when he
was 60 years old, he became the Director at
the State Museum for Geology and Mineralogy
in Leiden.
Entomology Department and after several
years he became Curator of the Mollusk
Department. In 1946 he was appointed Curator
of the Palaeontological-Mineralogical Cabinet
of the Teylers Museum.
The first group of animals he examined
in the Cabinet were the Teutoidea (fossil squid)
from the lithographic limestone of Solnhofen,
Germany. In doing so, he made the sixth
supplement of the systematic catalogue
(1949), which Winkler had begun. But Van
Regteren Altena wrote it in English, the new
international scientific language instead of
French: Systematic Catalogue of the
Palaeontological Collection, 6th supplement.
Teutoidea. In the meantime Dick Hooijer
determined the bones from Tegelen. The list
grew and grew and with other data Altena
gathered, they could publish a seventh
supplement: Vertebrata from the Pleistocene
Tegelen Clay, Netherlands.
At this time Altena was not content with
the dependency on the printed catalogues and
he started a card-index. In Amsterdam an
international symposium on insects was
organized. A good opportunity to reorganize
the showcases with insects from Oeningen and
Solnhofen. A lot of them were originals (O=
published specimen), types (T=first described
specimen, now holotypes), paratypes (P=
together described specimen) or syntypes
(S=used by description, but not the holotype).
C.O. van Regteren Altena (1907-1976);
a facelift of the Collection.
Mollusks, insects and ... Tiglian bones as
heritage
Carel Octavianus van Regteren Altena
studied biology at Amsterdam University, with
some palaeontological and geological subjects
as well. When he was about fifteen he made
his first publication (on squid). He had a
special interest in marine mollusks and after he
finished his studies he got a grant to produce a
publication on the seashells of the Dutch coast
and estuaries. That book was such a success
that in 1937 Amsterdam University decided
that this was his thesis. In 1941 he was
appointed Assistant Curator at the State
Museum of Natural History in Leiden in the
Dr. C.O. van Regteren Altena, the third Curator
from 1946-1976 (© Teylers Museum).
18
www.PalArch.nl
After World War II scientists were very
concerned about the fate of types. A lot of the
types in Germany were destroyed during the
war or lost, so they agreed to mark them with
the characters O, T, P or S so they could be
found easily in case of emergency. He made a
type-script too with all the types in it he knew
(mostly insects and bones from the Tiglian
clay). The cards in the index got a coloured clip
if the fossil was some kind of type or an
original. Altena also started a library with the
offprints he got in exchange for his scientific
articles, and of course a card-index organised
by author and year with it.
Changes in the showcases
Although Van Regteren Altena did not
purchase any fossils for the collection, he
made a lot of changes in the showcases. In
1970 a gifted retired housepainter became his
assistant, Mr. J. Klinker. All the showcases
were painted and the flat showcases got a
base of drawing paper. He also decided that
the showcases were too full. Sometimes more
than half of the number of fossils where placed
in the drawers below the cases; half of the
minerals and crystals in the Oval Room were
stored in cardboard boxes. The texts with the
fossils were altered. Not an occasional printed
or hand-written name near some fossils, like in
the Winkler exhibition, but each fossil got its
own plate, written by Mr. Klinker, with scientific
name, a short explanation in Dutch, the
catalogue number, the stratigraphical period
and find locality. He also made revisions of the
scientific names by using recent names and he
gave the collection a more scientific
appearance by adding plates in some
showcases with a zoological classification.
Large plates denoted class, and small plates
gave details of order and family.
Between 1970 and 1980 Klinker
restored all the big fossils from Lyme Regis
and Holzmaden. The stone surrounding the
plesiosaur was fractioned because the bones
were blooming grey with pyrite disease. The
bones were impregnated by a paraffin solution
in petrol, the stone repaired with a mix of
Araldite (an epoxy resin) and clay. So the idea
that everything in the Teylers Museum stayed
unchanged is an illusion. Van Regteren Altena
died in 1976 and after his death Klinker worked
for three years on his own on the collection and
died in 1982.
Walenkamp, De Vos and Lydie Touret
In 1979 Dr. J.H.C. Walenkamp was
appointed Curator of the PalaeontologicalMineralogical Cabinet. His thesis was on seaurchins. He was assisted by a student, Rob
Gortemaker, who made an inventory of the
sea-urchins for his studies biology, majoring in
palaeontology.
A French scientist, Dr. Lydie TouretBenmohamed, was appointed to take care of
the rocks and minerals. She wrote her thesis
on inclusions in precious stones. In the Teylers
Museum she started determining the minerals
but discovered a real treasure in historical
labels. The founders of mineralogy wrote these
labels and she started studying these and the
history of the collection. The results of her
studies were used for a major exhibition on
Van Marum held at the old Meat Hall in the city
centre of Haarlem: ‘Een elektriserend geleerde’
(‘An electrifying scientist’), Martinus van
Marum 1750-1837. This was in 1987, 150
years after Van Marum’s death.
In
1981
Walenkamp
went
to
Mozambique to take
classes at Maputo
University. He was succeeded by Drs. J. de
Vos. De Vos studied biology in Utrecht and
Original handwritten labels of famous scientists
studied by Dr. Lydie Touret (© Teylers
Museum).
19
www.PalArch.nl
was made enthusiastic for palaeontology by
Dr. P. Sondaar. He chose this as his major with
extra subjects in geology. Sondaar was
interested in the Isle-faunas of the
Mediterranean and specialized in mammals
and hominids. Utrecht University had a special
agreement with Athens University and the
students worked together on excavations in the
Greek Isles.
After his doctoral exams De Vos was
appointed as teacher at a grammar school. He
then got the opportunity to succeed Hooijer as
Curator of the Dubois Collection in the State
Museum of Natural History. There he became
interested in the person and life of Eugène
Dubois, and when offered the chance to take
the place of Walenkamp he was pleased to do
so, in his free time, on Saturdays. In 1983 he
took his doctors degree on the deer of Crete.
He had a great part in the foundation of the
WPZ in 1982, the workgroup on Pleistocene
mammals, of which he is chairman since 1992.
This was the situation I encountered
when I came as a voluntary preparator at the
Cabinet in 1983. Here ends the history I can
tell on the Palaeontological-Mineralogical
Cabinet, because I got involved. I could start
here with my memoirs but I doubt if I yet have
sufficient distance to write them down.
Although I am retired now for more than one
year, I am still in service as a volunteer…to
finish the loose ends, so to speak.
Consulted literature
Besselink, M. 1997. Winkler? Nooit van
gehoord. – Teylers Magazijn 57: 5-12.
Bouwman, P. & P. Broers. 1988. Teylers Boeken Konstzael. De bouwgeschiedenis van
Nederlands oudste museum. – Teylers
Magazijn 20: 1-2.
Breure, A.S.H. & J.G. de Bruijn. 1979. Leven
en werken van J.G.S. van Breda (1788 1867). – Haarlem/Groningen, H.D.
Tjeenk Willink B.V. & Hollandsche
Maatschappij der Wetenschappen.
Forbes, R.J. Ed. 1969. Martinus van Marum
Life
and
Work.
Volume
1.
Haarlem/Groningen, H.D. Tjeenk Willink
B.V. & Hollandsche Maatschappij der
Wetenschappen.
Hoek Ostende, van den, L.W. 1990. Tegelen,
ons land 2 miljoen jaar geleden. Teylers Magazijn Extra uitgave.
Mol, D., G. ter Mors, J.C. van Veen & J. de
Vos. 1995. De geschiedenis van de
mammoetschedel van Heukelum. –
Teylers Magazijn 49: 9-14.
Regteren Altena, van, C.O. 1957. Verleden en
heden van het Palaeontologisch Kabinet
van Teyler's Museum te Haarlem. –
Vakblad voor Biologen 10: 149-156.
Regteren Altena, van, C.O. 1978. Studies en
bijdragen over Teylers Stichting naar
aanleiding van het tweede eeuwfeest. Haarlem/Antwerpen, Schuyt en Co NV.
Sliggers, B.C. ed. 1996. Highlights from the
Teyler Museum. – Haarlem, Teylers
Museum.
Veen, van, J.C. 1994. Tegelen terug in Teylers
Museum. Honderd jaar veranderingen in
de paleontologische collectie. – Teylers
Magazijn 45: 6-9.
Veen, van, J.C. 1997. Tiberius Cornelis
Winkler 100 jaar geleden overleden. –
Teylers Magazijn 57: 9-12.
Vos, de, J. 1984. Teylers oervogel
(Archaeopteryx) was even terug op het
oude nest. – Teylers magazijn 5: 7-13.
Wiechmann, A. & L.C. Palm. ed. 1987. Een
elektriserend geleerde Martinus van
Marum 1750 – 1837. – Haarlem, Joh.
Enschedé en Zonen.
Winkler, T.C. 1886. Gids voor den bezoeker
van de Verzameling Versteeningen van
Teylers Museum. – Haarlem, De Erven
Loosjes.
Joop C. van Veen
Paleontologisch-Mineralogisch Cabinet
Teylers Museum
Spaarne 16
2032 SJ Haarlem
023-5319010
[email protected]
20
www.PalArch.nl
The Natural Sciences Library of the Teylers
Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands1
By M. van Hoorn
The core of this library is a splendid and
very complete collection of 18th and 19th
century literature on natural history, as the
study of botany, zoology and earth sciences
used to be called. The earliest acquisitions
date from 1780 and were made for the Book
and Art Gallery (Oval Room); the Library was
accommodated in its upper gallery. There,
Martinus van Marum (1750-1837) housed his
extensive
acquisitions
in
twelve
wall
cupboards. To this day, the collection bears his
stamp: it features all branches of natural
history, with an emphasis on botany. The
illustrated works from the heyday of descriptive
zoology are a highlight of the collection.
Scientific reports of explorations are also a
dominant feature. The collection of journals
grew much faster than the number of
monographs. Out of a total of 125,000 volumes
the ratio is at present one in four. The
collection of journals and magazines comes
from all over the world and contains many
longstanding titles. The finest examples are the
periodicals of the Royal Society of London and
of the Académie des Sciences in Paris, which
go back to 1665.
Van Marum was also responsible for
building up a library at the Dutch Society of
Sciences (Hollandsche Maatschappij der
Wetenschappen, founded: Haarlem 1752),
which continued to expand after his death. But
because this library was so rarely used, the
board eventually decided to hand the collection
over to other institutions, particularly
universities. In 1948 the remaining stock came
under the aegis of the Teylers Library.
The Reading Room, dating from 1824,
was the first extension to the Library. This is
where Van Marum housed the volumes on
botany, which were to serve as a reference
collection for his botanic garden ‘Plantlust’ on
the Zuider Buiten Spaarne. The zoology works
served a similar function when he was
custodian of the Natural History Collection of
the Dutch Society of Sciences. In 1825 an
assistant was appointed, the physician J.A.
1
See front page for photo.
van Bemmelen, who was to succeed Van
Marum as librarian in 1837. The first fruits of
this appointment were the opening of the
library to the public and the publication of a
catalogue in 1826. This catalogue details the
very first acquisition: Diderot and d’Alembert’s
Encyclopédie. This pre-eminent monument of
the Age of Enlightenment was purchased
immediately upon its completion in 1780 at a
price of 375 Dutch guilders. Between 1780 and
1826, the total amount spent on publications
for the Library mounted to 100,000 Dutch
guilders. In comparison, 34,000 and 20,000
Dutch guilders respectively were spent on the
other two departments administered by the
many-sided scientist Van Marum, the Cabinets
of Physics and of Palaeontology and
Mineralogy.
The classics form a striking section in
the first catalogue, especially the works of the
Church Fathers. At the instigation of the Teyler
Theological Society, works in this field were
assiduously collected for ten years. This,
however, came to an abrupt halt when the
Society no longer provided such a stimulus
and Van Marum was given an almost entirely
free hand. His most outstanding acquisition is
without a doubt John James Audubon’s ‘The
Birds of America’ (1826-1840). Today, this fivevolume publication is the most celebrated book
of plates in the history of ornithology.
Fourteen caudal vertebrae of Mosasaurus
hoffmanni from the St. Peter’s Mountain,
South Limburg, The Netherlands (Cretaceous
period) in the collection of the Teylers
Museum, inv.nr. 11210 (© Teylers Museum).
On the occasion of the opening of the
Reading Room, the secretary of the Teylers
Foundation drew up a ‘Regulation of order with
regard to the admission to and use of the
21
www.PalArch.nl
library’ that came into force on 24 June 1825.
Article 1 stated: “Without prejudice to the
normal visiting of the Museum and the Library
of the Teyler Museum, which is open to each
and everyone daily from 12 to 1 o’clock by
admission ticket, Inhabitants of Haarlem, on
Wednesdays and Saturdays from 1 to 4
o’clock, and Foreigners (which includes foreign
and native scholars not domiciled in Haarlem)
every day from 1 to 2 o’clock, excluding
Sundays and Holidays, and on Wednesdays
and Saturdays from 1 to 4 o’clock, may be
granted access to the Library and use the
books housed there.”
After Van Marum, the administration of
his collections was apportioned to various
members of the museum staff. Acquisitions
were no longer the sole responsibility of the
librarian, who kept a close eye on the
publication of new titles in the fields of analytic
botany and zoology, but also of the custodian
of the Palaeontological and Mineralogical
Cabinet. Under Van Bemmelen and his
successor D. Lubach, the collection rapidly
expanded. This was partly due to the
acquisition of the library of the Haarlem Clinical
School, which was closed down in 1865. This,
for example, enabled the Library to acquire a
magnificent anatomical atlas by Vesalius
dating from 1555.
With the arrival of C. Ekama in 1869
work began on the publication of a definitive
edition of the catalogue which was to replace
the temporary and abridged catalogues of
1826, 1832, 1837, 1848 and 1865. He
completed this work in 1889. Two more
volumes appeared later, produced by G.C.W.
Bohnensieg and J.J. Verwijnen respectively. In
addition to listing the acquisitions from the
period 1888-1912, these two extensive
volumes also catalogued articles from a large
number of journals and series. This brought the
Library in line with the international attempt to
administer and open up the rapidly expanding
field of scientific literature, whereby books
were being increasingly superseded by
journals.
Natural history underwent fundamental
changes in the last quarter of the 19th century.
Analytic botany and zoology were supplanted
by experimental biology (anatomy and
physiology). And the influence of a more
precise and experimental method also
expanded into the realm of geology. These
changes are clearly discernible in the Library,
and they serve to explain the hiatus that
appeared at around the turn of the century, a
period which for the Teylers Library marked a
permanent decline in the acquisition of books.
The costs of building the New Museum (18801885) to commemorate the Foundation’s
centenary were certainly a contributing factor
to this situation. One of the last significant
acquisitions was a coloured copy of Basilius
Besler’s Hortus Eystettensis dating from 1613,
bought from an antiquarian bookseller in 1915.
The decline was compensated for by the
establishment of a complex and extensive
exchange system of journals, which in the
course of the 20th century rose to some 1,000
titles. In the New Museum the Library occupied
the so-called Upper Room, in which the
zoological monographs, the exploration reports
and back issues of important periodicals were
housed.
After Verwijnen, the first and thus far
only woman librarian was appointed: H.C.
Dorhout Mees, who occupied the post from
1925 to 1956. She handled the bequest of
Nobel Prize winner professor H.A. Lorentz,
who had been Curator of the Cabinet of
Physics from 1909 until his death in 1928 and
who bequeathed his entire library to the
Teylers Museum. Dorhout Mees was assisted
by his son Rudolf Lorentz, a classical scholar,
who was appointed at the same time as she
and who succeeded her in 1957. In 1963, J.G.
de Bruijn was appointed as assistant librarian
to Lorentz; this post, however, was no longer
filled when Lorentz retired in 1967. De Bruijn
further extended the Library’s exchange stock
of natural history journals. In his capacity as
librarian/archivist of the Dutch Society of
Sciences, he edited important publications on
Martinus van Marum and his successor J.G.S.
van Breda. His period of tenure saw the
undertaking of a large-scale microfiche project
with the Leiden-based Inter Documentation
Company, whereby the Library made available
titles from its historical collection in exchange
for titles on microfiche which were missing.
In 1986, the Library, which had until then
been administered by the board of the Teylers
Foundation, came under the direct aegis of the
Museum as its fifth area of collecting. In the
22
www.PalArch.nl
Holwerda, A.E. van Giffen, H. Brugmans and
C.H. Peters (on The Netherlands).
Palaeontology: vertebrates
The palaeontology section, with some
800 titles, belongs to the largest ones of the
Library. Its subdivision on vertebrates contains,
amongst others, the works of Paul Gervais,
Hermann von Meyer, Richard Owen, A.
d’Orbigny, R. Lydekker and Othenio Abel.
View on Giza from the Description de l'Egypte
same year, the subscriptions to over 1000
journals which were taken on an exchange
basis were cancelled, owing to limited public
interest and financial constraints. The regular
acquisition of monographs had ceased as long
ago as the 1940’s. All this meant that the
Library changed from a contemporary scientific
resource into an historical museum collection.
This fundamental change made it possible to
bring the Teylers Library to greater public
prominence within the context of the Museum.
This is happening increasingly in the form of
group introductions and participation in
exhibitions, which from 1996 mainly take place
in the new Book Gallery. Also, many topics are
shown on the website of the Museum.
The archaeological collection
Although the core of the Library consists
of books and periodicals on natural history,
there have always been acquisitions in many
other areas, like the sciences, philosophy,
theology, scientific explorations, history, and
also archaeology. In relation to the PalArch
Foundation’s areas of interest, Egypt and North
West Europe, there are some hundred titles,
mainly dating from the 19th and early 20th
centuries. Especially in the section on Egypt
there are quite some multi-volume works, most
of these with many illustrations (engravings,
lithographs, photographs), for example the
Description de l’Egypte (1809-1828). Important
authors on Egypt are Heinrich Brugsch,
Conrad Leemans, R. Lepsius, A.C.Th.E. Prisse
d’Avennes, G. Maspero, E. Chassinat and J.
Capart; for North West Europe, I mention
Bernard de Montfaucon (on France), and J.H.
23
www.PalArch.nl
Sex in the museum
By V. van Vilsteren
Introduction
The Drents Museum is one of the most
popular museums in the northern Netherlands,
attracting some 70,000 visitors annually. Its
mission is simple: to please the public. This
seems quite obvious, but is in fact rather
surprising for a museum with such a long
history. Although famous as an archaeological
museum, founded in 1854, the Drents Museum
now has very diverse collections. Its ‘Art
Around 1900 Collection’, for example, is
unsurpassed in The Netherlands. But one can
also visit the oldest canoe in the world and the
famous bog bodies, including Yde, a 16-yearold girl. Authentic period rooms, a real Van
Gogh, a thrilling archaeological adventure in
the Discovery Room and the fabulous GeoExplorer are among the treasures to be
discovered.
The Museum is housed in an impressive
complex of historical buildings, in themselves
worthy of a visit. Ingeniously linked together,
the charming 13th century Abbey Church, 17th
century
Tax
Collector’s
House
(Ontvangershuis), 18th century Bailiff’s House
(Drostenhuis) and 19th century Provincial
Government House (Provinciehuis) offer
something for everyone. In the Middle Ages the
whole complex was the site of the Cistercian
nunnery Maria-in-Campis, of which only the
(rebuilt and renovated) Abbey Church is left.
The Tax collector’s House dates back to 1698,
the year in which the house was built in its
present form, as a place to live for the
provincial tax collector. The Tax Collector’s
House consists of six period rooms, each with
its own colourful wall covering. The Bailiff’s
House dates back to 1778. It was the
residence of the Bailiff (drost), who used to be
the highest official in the province of Drente, an
office nowadays held by the Queen’s
Commissioner.
The
former
Provincial
Government House was built in the 1880’s.
The outside of the building is richly decorated
and has various Neo-Gothic and Renaissance
characteristics. As soon as you enter the
museum you will notice the richly decorated
hall. The famous murals by George Sturm
depict the most important episodes from the
history of Drente: the building of the megalithic
monuments (hunebedden), the preaching of
the Christian faith, the conquest by
Charlemagne, the bequest of the entire
province to the bishop of Utrecht, and the
provincial Deputies plotting the Landrecht (a
law which was different from the rest of The
Netherlands, and was used for centuries in
Drente). In 1996 the various buildings of the
Drents Museum were renovated by connecting
the several buildings and making two new
exhibition rooms by roofing the courtyard of the
former Provincial Government House. The new
Museum now has a surface area of approx.
5000 m2.
Sex in the museum
The façade of the Drents Museum, Assen with
the large Banner of the exhibition (© Drents
Museum).
With archaeology being one of the two
main topics for temporary exhibitions the
Drents Museum showed such diverse
exhibitions like ‘The Flint Smith’, ‘The Bone
Age’ (on objects of bone, antler and horn),
‘Amber’, ‘Excavated Sounds’ (on musical
archaeology) and ‘The History of Beer’. Even
with such a focus on thematic exhibitions, a
firm discussion took place in 2001, when the
idea arose to show an exhibition on the history
24
www.PalArch.nl
left out. Overall, the aim of the exhibition is to
show how waves of sexual tolerance and
inhibition have succeeded one another through
the ages. Even in recent years we can observe
a little wave with society becoming slightly less
sexually tolerant, with increasing prosecution
rates for people accessing internet porn, for
example. The exhibition only dealt with
Europe; worldwide would be too much for the
Drents Museum. But nothing has been
censored.
Overview of the exhibition in the Drents
Museum (© E. Mortiz, The Hague).
of sexuality. Can a respected institution like the
Drents Museum risk its fame with a tricky
business like sex? Shouldn’t we pay attention
to such a universal topic? Finally the direction
of the museum decided to program the
exhibition for 2003. So in November last year
the exhibition ‘100,000 Years of sex’ was
opened.
We all know what sex is and what it
entails. It all seems pretty straightforward. And
yet sexuality has in different periods in human
history been interpreted in entirely different
ways. In particular, people’s attitudes towards
sexuality have changed substantially over the
ages. What we would consider quite ordinary
today may have been highly offensive in the
early Middle Ages. And what was perfectly
normal to the ancient Greeks may well be
taboo in our day and age, or even forbidden by
law.
Sexuality has by no means been a
constant factor in history. Every era had its
own views on this subject, and approached it in
its own way.
The story begins with Stone Age man
discovering shame (cf. Adam and Eve) and
beginning to cover himself in clothes, rather
than parading naked and having sex all over
the shop. This is the origin of the ‘100,000
Years’ title – definitely not claiming any real
accuracy for this figure, it is just a rough
estimate. The exhibition stops at 1900, so
people expecting explicit photography or
movies were disappointed. Even the sexual
liberation of the 1960’s and 1970’s, in itself not
a high watermark in sexual tolerance, but
rather a period where ‘the yoke of Victorian
repression was lifted from our shoulders’, was
Fertility and eroticism
The oldest exhibits are the nude statues
of plump and large-breasted Venusses, dating
from around 25 or 30,000 BC. Most probably
they had no meaning in our sexual terms, but
rather served a fertility purpose. No equivalent
male figures have been discovered until
14,000 BC. From this scientists conclude that
men didn't make the connection between sex
and birth. By the 13th century BC, men (or
possibly women) were scribbling pictures with
sexual content on their cave walls. The
examples are low on artistic merit, but you can
see what they are driving at.
Only scarcely prehistoric records reveal
something sexual. One example comes from
Bulgaria: a grave (dating around 4,300 BC)
containing a gold penis shaft, like a long
thimble, found in place along with a host of
other ornaments. Not really useful, but it is
clear that the man thus symbolised the male
power and dominance. Another grave,
excavated in Denmark, has a female skeleton
with a fancy buckled jacket and a kind of string
skirt. This was see-through and could perhaps
be interpreted as one of the first proofs of real
eroticism: sexy in the Bronze Age.
Once we reach the Greek and Roman
periods, sexual adventurism really begins to
kick in. Athens was full of nude statues, there
were many bathhouses, and they were very
much used to the nude body. Greek and
Roman society was very different from the later
Christian society because the Christian god is
non-sexual. Greek and Roman gods did
anything they liked, homosexuality, sex with
animals, rape ... So it was also quite normal in
these societies to do the same. Although it may
have been that they were used to this and
projected their behaviour on their gods.
25
www.PalArch.nl
simply reads "Promus fellator" ("Master of
sucking").
A different regime
Greek vase, 5th century BC. Collection
Antikensammlung Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
(© I. Geske, Berlin).
Excavations at Pompeii have yielded a
great wealth of sexual paraphernalia and
archaeological evidence of wanton behaviour.
For the Romans, a phallus was a symbol of
good luck; householders would display a
winged penis outside their doors, with little
bells hanging from it. In Holland testicles are
sometimes still referred to as bells…
Romans also prefigured the modern
souvenir-shop gag of making teapots with
penis-shaped spouts. One fine example here
was supposedly unearthed by the German
Emperor Wilhelm II, but rumour has it that his
minions would bury objects deliberately for him
to ‘discover’. Other Roman bits and pieces
include coins, engraved with a range of sexual
positions, which are thought to have been used
as currency for prostitutes: the coin you give
indicates how you want to be serviced.
Pompeii also bequeathed us some of
the most vivid written sexual graffiti ever
composed. "During the wine harvest festival,
Veneria sucked off Maximus. Her holes
remained empty, only her mouth was full." Or
this one: "You have had eight different
professions - you've been a builder, a
merchant ... [etc], but once you've done
cunnilingus you've tried everything." Another
All this lasciviousness comes to an end
with the ascendancy of the Catholic Church in
Europe. While there are few artefacts from this
period, the church is revealed as being quite
extraordinarily obsessed with sex. Between
700 and 1200 AD a tradition grew of writing
‘penitentiary books’, detailing how society
should behave. Around a third of these rules
applied to sexual matters.
At their most extreme, penitentiary
books forbade sex on Wednesdays, Fridays,
Saturdays and Sundays, for three days after
getting married, in the daytime, when
menstruating,
when
pregnant,
when
breastfeeding, in the week before Easter,
during Advent, on feast days and fast days, in
church or when naked. You should not try to
enjoy sex and only do it if you want a child. It's
a wonder the species didn't become extinct!
In the 11th century, Bishop Burchhart of
Worms took the genre one stage further.
Drawing
on
unexpected
reserves
of
imagination, he wrote (in Latin) that his flock
should be sure not to have sex with animals, or
One of the beautiful banners from the
Exhibition (© Drents Museum).
26
www.PalArch.nl
with their own children. And women should, it
almost goes without saying, absolutely never
have sex with one another.
One physical representation of sexuality
manifested by Catholicism was the tradition of
Sheela-na-gig: a gargoyle-like stone carving
found on dozens of Irish (and a few English)
churches. These small figures are of naked
women with their legs spread wide open,
sometimes using their hands to pry their labia
apart. The vagina would often be touched by
the congregation, supposedly to bring fertility.
Or else they were meant to distract the devil
and leave the congregation undisturbed.
Dildos loom large in the later parts of the
exhibition. A particularly beautiful one was
found in Zwolle in The Netherlands. Dating
from the 17th century, it has a pump action that
was either meant to heighten a woman's
orgasm, or (more mundanely) for cleaning
purposes.
A dildo made of glass was found in the
cesspit of a 17th century German nunnery.
Experts believe this was another early joke
item, used or drinking and causing much
merriment as the abbess held it tenderly in her
hand.
Contraception was already practised in
antiquity, but condoms only appeared on stage
after syphilis spread around Europe following
the discovery of America in 1492. The oldest
condoms in the world are from Dudley Castle,
near Birmingham and date back to the 1640’s.
They look like desiccated autumn leaves,
carefully placed on display on the exhibition
resting on penis-shaped polystyrene plinths. Of
the 10 retrieved from the Castle, five were
found wrapped one inside the other, either for
storage or because the user was especially
cautious. A Swedish condom made of sheep's
bladder has survived far better. It is extra large,
still looks vaguely useable, and comes with a
handy instruction leaflet. "Soak the membrane
in milk and put it on before having sex with a
prostitute," it advises. It clearly illustrated that
in those times condoms were not used for
contraception, but as a barrier against syphilis.
A final section of the exhibition points
out that while the Victorians admired classical
civilisation, they found the sexual elements
embarrassing. Museums would create secret
cabinets to house the dirty stuff. These are
now widely accessible. Although in the Naples
Museum of Archaeology, for example, it is all
still hidden behind a huge iron gate. Visitors
still have to make a special reservation to have
a peek. The Victorian repression of whatever
sexual topic however, could not prevent that
early photography in the mid-19th century was
very rapid in introducing pornographic
elements in their studies.
Pulling crowds
The whole array as it was exhibited in
the Drents Museum in Assen has been pulling
crowds in record. The amount of visitors (more
than 30,000) more than doubled the normal
numbers. It was expected that the audience
would mainly consist of young adults, under
the assumption that they were the age group
most interested in sex, but the average visitor
has been women between the age of 55 and
65.
The attendance of the visitors was
maybe surpassed by the attention the
exhibition received from the press. Radio,
television, newspapers and magazines all
closely worked together to create a sort of
media hype. This was not restricted to The
Netherlands: the ‘BBC World Service’
mentioned it, as well as the ‘Sydney Morning
Herald’ in Australia. ‘La Stampa’ in Italy
Another example of banners
Exhibition (© Drents Museum).
from
the
27
www.PalArch.nl
published it and ‘The Independent’ sent a
journalist from London for a three-page article
in their weekly Magazine. ‘Wisconsin Public
Radio’ had a one-hour live interview on the
exhibition and Spanish television sent out a
crew from Madrid. After all this media attention,
exploring the exhibition’s coverage on the
internet proved to be fairly time-consuming.
Travelling exhibition
The whole project, including the
beautiful design by Mrs. Lies Ros from
Amsterdam, was developed as a travelling
exhibition. Fortunately several museums in
different European countries are interested in
showing the exhibition. The international tour
foresees stops in Maaseik (Belgium), Hamburg
(Germany), Odense (Denmark), Frankfurt
(Germany) and Dresden (Germany) and
negotiations with potential American venues
are still in progress. The well-known saying
‘sex sells’ once again appears to be
reconfirmed.
Sex is not only as old as the proverbial
road to Rome, but indeed as old as Adam and
Eve. Sex is, has always been, and will always
remain a part of our lives. The exhibition
‘100,000 Years of sex’ invited the visitor for a
trip across Europe, showing the many different
ways in which people in the past have
regarded sexuality. Our attitudes today, since
the sexual revolution that took place in the
1960’s and 1970’s, prove to be entirely
different from those that prevailed in the 19th
century. While the ancient Greeks in turn
approached sexuality in a manner that differed
strongly from that of people in the Lower
Palaeolithic.
Over the centuries, people have
interpreted and expressed the concept of
sexuality in highly diverse and often
unprecedented creative ways. Thus, the
survey presented in ‘100,000 Years of sex’ is
actually a piece of cultural history of everyday
things of all times.
The Drents Museum has his own
website: http://www.drentsmuseum.nl. More on
the
exhibition
can
be
found
at
www.100000jaarsex.be.
Project manager of the Exhibition Vincent van
Vilsteren surrounded by Venusses (© M. van
Engelen).
28
www.PalArch.nl
Archaeological illustration; combining ‘old’ and
new techniques
By M.H. Kriek
My name is Mikko Kriek. For the last 10
years I have been active in the world of
archaeology. First as a student ancient history
at the Free University of Amsterdam working
on several excavations in The Netherlands and
abroad. More recently I am working as an
archaeological illustrator for the archaeological
department of the same university. My work
consists mostly of the production of artefact
drawings. In addition I also work free-lance for
different employers like urban archaeologists,
museums, collectors etc. My free-lance
assignments cover a broader spectrum of
activities like artefact drawings, site plans,
maps and reconstruction drawings.
Every summer I participate in the
excavations at Tell Sabi Abyad in the north of
Syria. For the project I am responsible for all
the artefact drawings and architectural
drawings in the field. In all, the diversity makes
this job a very interesting and stimulating one.
Since a couple of years I am also a full
member of the Association of Archaeological
Illustrators and Surveyors, an international
body for archaeological illustrators.
The fascination from an early age on for
drawings in books about the ancient world
together with an interest in history were
motives to start a career in archaeological
illustration. After getting acquainted with some
of the different techniques and methods of
excavating on various archaeological sites I
learned how to combine these newly acquired
skills with my aptitude for drawing.
I started making illustrations using
Map of Mesopotamia (© M.H. Kriek)
Reconstruction of a Neolithic tholos for ‘The
Archaeology of Syria’ by P. Akkermans & G.
Schwartz (© M.H. Kriek).
traditional pen-and-ink techniques using advice
and examples given by other illustrators. I
produced some series of object drawings for
several projects and a range of reproduction
drawings for a book about forgeries in
museums worldwide. Gradually, my career
started to develop, picking up more and more
work to an amount that I could make a living
out of it.
My methods and techniques gradually
improved and changed. Starting as a pen and
ink ‘purist’ I slowly reverted to digital image
processing. The use of drawing software
produced very clear and accurate object
drawings. Maps and charts could be made with
a much more satisfying result. The
combination of digital cameras, image
enhancement software and drawing software
yielded a very precise and efficient method to
create detailed drawings of features on
excavations. Also handmade drawings could
be enhanced using drawing software. Due to
experiments with certain techniques I acquired
Reconstruction of a bronze age Armenian
burial mound (© M.H. Kriek).
29
www.PalArch.nl
Achaemenian animal protome for ‘The Lie
Became Great’ by O.W.Muscarella (© M.H.
Kriek).
a number of basic methods for the digital
registration of visual archaeological data.
The technique I use to make a digital
drawing of an archaeological artefact is done
by making a high resolution scan of all the
facings of the object that needs to be drawn
(i.e. front, sides, top). These scans are
adjusted and rectified, mostly just a little bit,
using photo enhancement software. Eventually
a 100% digital image of the artefact (and its
desired facings) remains.
The digital drawing of the object can
now be constructed by importing the digital
image in a drawing programme and eventually
start tracing its contours and filling up the
details, ornamentation and shading using line
Roman clothing pins (© M.H. Kriek).
Roman bone comb (© M.H. Kriek).
elements and/or small dots. This is a perfect
way to make accurate images of small
bronzes, bone artefacts or leather. Some
objects are too large or heavy for a scanner so
a digital photograph has to be made. This
image needs more rectification due to the lens
deviation of a camera, something a scanner
has to a much lesser extent.
Still, some drawings demand a
combination of digital imagery and handmade
pencil drawings. Pottery for instance is an
artefact category that has to be represented in
drawing in such a way that it is virtually
impossible to make a scan of the object itself
first; a handmade section drawing of the
pottery object has to be made first in pencil.
This drawing can be used as a basis for the
eventual digital drawing by scanning it and
tracing it over using drawing software.
Some artefact categories can only be
Medieval leather shoe (© M.H. Kriek).
30
www.PalArch.nl
Assyrian cylinder seal (© M.H. Kriek).
Roman pottery (© M.H. Kriek).
drawn digital using yet another combination of
handmade and digital images. Flint objects for
instance need a very close examination during
the process of drawing itself. The direction in
which small pieces have been flaked off can
only be seen with the naked eye. A highresolution scan of the flint object can serve as
a basis. A good clear print of the digital scan is
placed under a sheet of tracing paper and the
outlines of the flint object as well as the larger
and clearly visible facets can be traced by
hand. After this is done, the smaller facets not
visible on the digital image and the print, can
be drawn by studying the object. Eventually the
finished pencil drawing is scanned and traced
over using digital drawing software.
This method can also be (partly) used in
the production of drawings of fine and
delicately ornamented objects like cylinder
seals. A high-resolution scan of the seal and its
impression is made. A print of the scan is used
as a basis to make a pencil drawing on tracing
paper. Because of the complex nature of the
drawing conventions for seals, it is easier (and
I think better) to make the final ink drawing by
hand.
The method used for the detailed
Neolithic flint artefacts (© M.H. Kriek).
recording of on-site features is in a way similar
to the production of digital artefact drawings,
although in this process not a scanner is used
but a digital camera.
For instance when a burial is uncovered
on an excavation, the feature is properly
cleaned in such a way that it is clearly visible.
Preparations can be made to make a digital
registration. A minimum of four points
(measuring pins) have to be set out around the
burial on regular intervals (for instance on the
corners of an imaginary rectangular of 2 by 1
meters) in such a way that they are clearly
visible on the digital photograph. It is very
important that a scale bar is visible in the area
to be photographed. If all this is done, a digital
photograph can be taken from the sharpest
angle possible. After shooting, the digital
picture is scaled to a desired size (thanks to
the scale bar!) with photo enhancement
Dutch medieval burials (© M.H. Kriek).
31
www.PalArch.nl
Middle Assyrian child burial (© M.H. Kriek).
software. The image is reworked (i.e. the
perspective slope under which the picture was
taken is adjusted) by use of the measurement
pins present in the photograph. The pins are of
utmost importance; they are the guidelines for
adjusting the image but they also connect the
image (and at a later stage the drawing) to the
measurement grid of the whole excavation.
The rectified image of the burial is now
imported and traced using drawing software.
The result is an accurate digital rendering of
the feature ready for publication. In black and
white or in colour if desired.
This method is very time effective; while
the actual drawing is being produced the
feature itself can be removed and work in the
field can continue. I would like to emphasise
that, as with artefact drawings, there still are
situations in which an ‘old fashioned’
handmade detailed drawing of a feature is
more preferable than a digital drawing.
Sometimes the feature is not clear enough to
be recorded on photograph or too big to be
photographed properly.
It is positive that modern day equipment
can be used to make time efficient and
accurate renderings of visual archaeological
data. However, we must not forget that there
are still certain circumstances, as I have
mentioned above, in which non-digital methods
still are the best and sometimes only options.
In spite of the development of digital
technologies these circumstances will always
be present to challenge and stimulate the true
skills of the archaeological draughtsman.
For more information about my work as
an illustrator you can visit my website:
www.bcl-support.nl. For more information
about archaeological illustration in general you
can visit the website of the Association of
Archaeological Illustrators and Surveyors on:
www.aais.org.uk.
Mikko at work on Tell Sabi Abyad (© O.
Nieuwenhuyse).
32
www.PalArch.nl
The pleasure of travelling to the past
By C. Papolio
My relation with palaeontology goes
back to a very young age, motivated by ‘The
Animal World’ in 1956, a film by Irvin Allen. The
poster of this film brought up an unusual
anxiety because of the featured dinosaurs;
these enormous creatures that were even
greater than an elephant (all children are
astonished by that great beast when in the Zoo
and that was not different for me when I was a
child). In the cinema I could not hide my
surprise when the animated creatures fought
ferociously with each other. We ought to be
grateful
to
Willis
O’Brien
and
Ray
Harryhausen, who created among the
audience an enormous expectation concerning
these creatures in the 1940's and 1950's.
I remained obsessed from that time
onwards, collecting many books, magazines,
comic strips and movies. One such example,
which I collected at the end of the 1950’s, is
the Spanish comic ‘Turok, son of stone’.
I did not start my career with graphic
design and advertising until I was forty. The
prehistoric animals, however, were always in
my mind but I never had a change to draw
them until 1985, when I visited the American
Museum of Natural History in New York and I
saw the panorama of the Tyrannosaurus and
Movie poster ‘The animal world’.
Turok, issue no. 15.
Triceratops, which I knew from my childhood. I
also appreciated the illustrations of Charles
Knight that I saw published in palaeontology
books.
But it was not until 1993 that I started to
work out the idea of drawing them. I was
acquainted with the advertising illustration
business and only had to learn the conventions
of palaeontological drawing. Two events
motivated this decision. The book ‘Jurassic
Park’ by Michel Crichton, but even more so the
film made by Steven Spielberg. I already
admired Spielberg because of ‘Jaws’, ‘E.T.’,
‘Close Encounters’, ‘Amazing Stories’ etc. The
other event was the March 1993 issue of the
‘National Geographic’ magazine, which was
dedicated to dinosaurs and illustrated by John
Gurche, who I greatly admire.
I began to learn and quickly my hours of
investigation began to surpass the hours of my
daily work in design and advertisement. In the
beginning, drawing these prehistoric beasts
was a hobby that started in childhood but it
became far more serious now. To this it is
added that in 1994 my fiancée (and present
wife) invited me to visit the museums in
Buenos Aires. Instead of taking her to the art
museums, which would have been the most
logical because of my artistic background, we
went to the Museo Argentino de Ciencias
Naturales. There, I met the world famous and
most recognized Argentinean palaeontologist
Dr. Bonaparte. It must be noted that in my
country,
Argentina,
the
news
of
palaeontological finds spreads very little. There
33
www.PalArch.nl
Cryolophosaurus ellioti (© C. Papolio 2000).
is always much more palaeontological news
(like documentaries and head line news) from
the United States. That was what I thought until
I realized that dinosaurs lived all around the
world and at the same periods, only the
amount of attention given by the press differed.
It can be said that the acquaintance with
Dr. Bonaparte was decisive for my present
activity. When I showed him my first drawings it
greatly impressed him, which resulted in a
good and close professional relationship that
continues until the present day. In January
1995 I experienced fieldwork for the first time,
learning how palaeontology is performed:
excavating, cleaning and conservation and
study of the fossils. But my real job started at
the drawing board, reconstructing the life of the
fossils found by the expedition.
In 1996 I still worked as a graphic
designer but as a palaeoartist as well. The
Argentinean Museum of Natural Sciences
Bernardino Rivadavia asked me to be the
illustrator for a travelling exhibition to Japan
and that same year I made the illustrations of
Argentinean dinosaurs for the chip-cards of
Telefónica de Argentina, a telephone
company, competing the cards with Jurassic
Park illustrations of another telephone
Herrerasaurus (© C. Papolio 1997).
company.
My work was received very well and
consequently I had my first exhibition in 1997,
on invitation by the Banco de la Provincia de
Buenos Aires and with the support of the
Argentinean Museum of Natural Sciences
Bernardino Rivadavia. For this, the sculptress
Silvia Fiori and I made a life size Herrerasarus
(3 meters), together with other sculptures and
illustrations. The exhibition lasted a month and
was a great success. Due to this exhibition, the
National Tourism Department invited me to
participate in Expolisboa '98 where my
sculptures and illustrations were exhibited in
the Argentine pavilion. At the same time
various TV series (‘National Document’ at
channel 7: chapter ‘Ischiagualasto’ and
‘Talampaya’ and ‘Paleoworld’: chapter ‘The
Killer Elite’) showed the construction of the
head of Carnotosaurus.
Nowadays, I participate annually as
palaeoartist for vertebrate palaeontological
expeditions to various sites in Argentina. At the
moment I am finishing ‘Dinosaurios de
Gondwana’, a book of scientific and artistic
nature with over 400 images of which 90%
have never been published before and to
which
famous
South
American
palaeontologists have contributed. This work
has absorbed my time for the last seven years
and is next to be published.
If you have talent and want to work as
palaeoartist, I think you should take the
following points into account. First, in the hyper
realistic illustrations we are as good as the
reference that we have (photographs,
descriptions
and
the
like).
Second,
palaeoartists have to work in close
collaboration with the scientists. Third, use
good quality material, such as pasteboards,
brushes, aerographs and acrylics (oils or
gouache). In sculpture the silicone rubber must
Suchomimus tenerensis (© C. Papolio 2003).
34
www.PalArch.nl
be used instead of the copied one. Fourth, in
sculpture it is essential to obtain determinant
elements (such as the diagnostic skulls,
measurements of the bones but also the
studies provided by the palaeontologists) and
to correct, three dimensionally, after each
stadium previous to the modelled one. Fifth, be
precise in the delivery to the museum (the
inauguration of a room can depend on it), or in
the submission to the magazine or book.
Finally, you should practice, practice and
practice!
If you want to know more about the work
of Carlos Papolio, you can visit his website
http://www.sauroquondam.com/
The mammoths beneath the sea
By D. Mol
Introduction
North Sea fishing
The
staff
of
Océanopolis
and
Cerpolex/Mammuthus (www.oceanopolis.com)
have created a fascinating display about the
huge quantity of mammoth remains that
fishermen have brought up from the bottom of
the North Sea between the United Kingdom
and The Netherlands. There is a story to tell
about the mammoth, based not only on these
North Sea discoveries but also based on
remains from Siberia.
In a large fishing net, hundreds of
mammoth remains are ‘caught’, which gives a
good indication of the abundance of those
fossils on the bottom of the North Sea.
However, there are no complete skeletons left.
Palaeontological remains of other mammals
are not really addressed at this exhibit. This
has been done on purpose; this way the focus
remains on the main characters of this story.
They are the mammoths, and this exhibit takes
you back in time into their habitat. The Dutch
35
www.PalArch.nl
sculptor from Rotterdam, Remie Bakker, made
large reconstructions of landscapes populated
with mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses and
steppe bison in order to depict the vast
mammoth steppes of the Pleistocene.
peninsula, the Dolgans. After all, it was the
Dolgan family Jarkov who discovered the
mammoth first in 1997. So this part of the
exposition is dedicated to their history and their
every day life, particularly in wintertime with
extremely harsh climatic circumstances.
Yarkov
Growth and development of mammoths
An instance from Siberia is the famous
Jarkov mammoth, which was retrieved in 1999.
A replica of the block containing its remains is
on display. The original block of solid frozen
mud with the remains of the mammoth
currently resides in a subterranean cave, in the
far North region of Siberia, on the Taimyr
Peninsula. The explorers have been working
arduously on the block, which weighs 23,000
kilograms, and they have discovered some
very interesting facts about mammoths and
their natural environment. The part of the block
that has been thawed, has produced an
overwhelming treasure of information. Details
are shown at the exhibition. Moreover, short
motion pictures are shown to enlighten the
visitor on those revelations.
Bakker has crafted a replica of the
block, including the huge tusks of the Jarkov
mammoth and has done a terrific job as you
will see when you visit the exhibition in Brest.
The display shows the progress of the
painstaking exposure of the Jarkov mammoth,
aged 20,380 years. It also gives the visitor a
good idea of how and which sections of the
block are being explored, thawed by using
ordinary hair dryers, and it shows what kind of
information has been gathered to date.
There is also a Jarkov mammoth replica
and visitors may view the narrative of its
spectacular and daring recovery. A new
technique was introduced, excavating a
gigantic block of permafrost, during a harsh
Siberian winter when the ground is totally
frozen. This required the utilization of really
heavy equipment (among which a gigantic
transport helicopter), to bring it to a suitable
place for exploration. The replica block shows
that the woolly mammoth was really ‘woolly’,
as thick layers of wool are still embedded in the
frozen mud.
Dolgans
Some twenty sculptures, crafted by
Werner Schmid, show how a mammoth is born
and how he slowly develops into a sturdy old
behemoth by the age of about 47 years. After
visiting this exhibition it will be clear that not all
mammoths have had gigantic tusks. Also this
exhibition will dispel certain misconceptions
about mammoths such as the image of gigantic
but sad monsters roaming around lonely in the
eternal snow, about to be scavenged by packs
of wolves. The exhibition will make clear that
this picture is most inaccurate.
Where can I find ‘The mammoths beneath the
sea’?
If you plan to spend your holiday in
France and you are in the vicinity of Brest
(Bretagne) you do not want to miss the
opportunity of seeing this unique exhibition
about an exceptional animal. It is worth it. Oh,
and do not forget, of course, to visit the
beautiful and gigantic fish tanks of
Océanopolis. Océanopolis is easy to find in
Brest. Just follow the big signs and you will find
yourself in the parking area soon, without any
problem. Details can be found at the website
www.oceanopolis.com and for opening hours
and
admission
fees:
http://www.oceanopolis.com/infos/horaires.htm
Dick Mol
Cerpolex/Mammuthus
Natuurmuseum Rotterdam
[email protected]
In such an exhibition attention must be
given to the native people of the Taimyr
36
www.PalArch.nl
‘Archeologie Magazine’ in the electronic age
By L. Lichtenberg
Introduction
Media are part of a society. They listen
to the heart beat rhythm in society and they
make the heart of a society beat faster.
‘Archeologie Magazine’ as a magazine on
archaeology and history is being created for a
broad public in The Netherlands and Belgium.
As an information product in those countries
this magazine reflects these societies in many
ways. This means of course that changes in
society, including electronic ones, affect also
the present and future presentation and
content of such an information product.
Changing information supply
Media industries in general are worrying
how to reach the consumer in information
societies with more, and increasingly fast,
flows of information. Where people never seem
to have enough time and growing leisure time
is being spent on short holidays abroad, media
often try to attract the consumer by devoting
more space to such leisure information.
Sometimes the distribution of this kind of
information develops at the expense of
information that consumers ‘need’ for their
education or in order to shape their opinions as
politically active citizens. In such cases
information grows more and more in economic
value, at the expense of its political and
cultural value. Whereas communications policy
in several countries tends to remove barriers to
effective competition some people in other
nations fear the drawbacks of a purely
economic approach of the information supply
and try to draw more attention to cultural and
other approaches in the media and media
policy.
These developments indicate more
fundamental trends in an rapidly changing
information supply which together result in
growing competition between content and
communication
service
providers
and
contribute to a fundamental change in the
structure of media and communication
markets. Trends like more attention to image,
entertainment, society gossip, etc., develop at
the expense of information of a more serious
nature. These trends also fundamentally
change the context of equal competition in
communications. Not all societal and cultural
opinions and movements have equal access
to the communication process, regardless of
the number of their supporters. Awakening
social, political and cultural innovation often
has insufficient opportunities to play a role.
These trends also reflect changes in the media
use of the public: people in general, and
especially the younger ones, are using more
audio-visual media, read less and, if they read
papers or magazines at all, prefer images, info
graphics and colourful presentations. The 'Nintendo kids' are growing up.
With trends like these in the background
it might appear suicidal to continue publishing
an archaeological magazine on paper like
‘Archeologie Magazine’ in The Netherlands.
But still there may be good reasons for such
hard copy, as I will try to explain in this
contribution.
E-based information
Electronic developments for journalism
media, have benefits elsewhere, including
media such as ‘Archeologie Magazine’, which
of course benefits from the use of the internet.
For everybody computers, linked together in
networks, are opening new ways to search
through enormous amounts of information all
over the world and at a much higher speed
than the traditional methods. Computers and
networks enable every user to get the relevant
information right into their own computer files.
Information supply can be faster and bigger,
and also more innovative: new technological
possibilities
can
create
new,
more
personalised and more direct ways of
distributing the information, even without the
intercession of journalists. Users can directly
access the information they need from the
networks.
But the internet also offers more and
more possibilities for journalists in their efforts
to get, to check or to complete information. A
growing number of reporters are going online
to get story ideas. In this way professional
journalists use the internet more and more as a
research tool. Special theme data banks can
help them in their work. For that reason
37
www.PalArch.nl
journalists themselves are creating special
reporting tools, like self-made homepages with
special Internet links to all kinds of information
sources. These may include personalised
information on many sections of topics, with
special search engines and names and
addresses of contacts. Besides these data
banks there are also some intelligent agents
especially for journalists, specialist software for
finding specific information from all over the
world. Journalists can subscribe to these
agents and in return they daily receive the
latest information in their e-mailbox.
However, journalists have also to face
competition of users who can get their
information directly from internet, quite
independent of traditional media. In this world
of growing information streams the journalist
fears losing his role as the ultimate
gatekeeper, the person with the, almost
unique, power to decide what kind of
information will reach the public. What was
previously abbreviated, summarised, changed
or skipped, is now all there; for the user to find
and for the source to make public. Readers
can access all the information themselves.
They may also find that the selection process
for the information they need can be far better
performed by an automated process, an agent
or a pre-formatted selection of main topics of
interest. In future the role of information broker
may be played by individualised software
(European Journalism Centre, ‘The future of
the printed press, challenges in a digital world’,
Maastricht, May 1998).
Does this means that the days of
journalists are over? To understand what you
hear and see it is necessary to take note of the
reports from gatekeepers, like journalists, who
analyse and interpret the events. Unlike the
general public they are trained to identify
credible information or dig deeper on spurious
data that is floating around. Journalists add
knowledge, judgement, context, insight and
perspective to news and information. In that
way the role of journalists for society remains
very important and perhaps more important
than ever before. But this will require a
redefinition of the gate keeping function of
journalists, more adapted to specific skills for
the ways in which they have to deal with the
flood of free information.
Implications for printed magazines
These electronic developments then, do
not imply that the days of printed magazines
are over. Online media will remain experimental for some time to come. At the moment
there is much uncertainty about their market
opportunities. Magazines world-wide are
putting up online activities and it will be
inevitable that some of these ventures will fail
because of lack of consumer interest, or
advertisers, or because of poorly conceived
business plans or poor management. A
considerable amount of time and resources are
needed before breaking even. It is clear that
this business is very young: many online
services of printed papers have been operating
for only a few years at the most. Their business
models call for at least a 2-4 year turn-around
period. Current estimates are that the internet
will reach critical mass for general acceptance
in around five years. It is too soon to expect
that these services will be bringing in enough
to break even. Nevertheless many experts
share a continued positive long-term outlook
for the electronic services in general. No doubt,
the incredible growth in use of the internet will
contribute to this positive outlook.
Until the moment that the internet media
is fully proven, magazines produced by ink on
paper will continue to be very popular and
heavily used mass media for many years to
come. They can still cope with the information
contents of our news and advertising
information from the local area to around the
globe. They are still uniquely positioned to be
significant players in this media age.
At this moment it cannot yet be claimed
that the internet and online information
products are really mass media products. Only
the happy few are making progress and there
are many people who cannot join the club,
because of a slow computer, their lack of
experience with new information and
communication technology
or simply the
absence of a computer. To become real mass
media products, online magazines must fulfil at
least two conditions: they must be cheap and
they must be easy to use.
38
www.PalArch.nl
Prospects
Some changes to online carriers or even
new products are being presented that can
pave new ways for strategy as they are enable
to reach more groups of people. All over the
world experiments are going on with an
electronic newspaper presented on a portable
flat-panel video screen or as a portable digital
news book with full colour info graphics,
photographs, sound and moving images. The
vision behind those experiments is that using
that ‘tablet’ still means using electronic
publishing, but it is based more on the familiar
technology in newspapers, magazines and
books. Like a printed magazine you can read
the paper on a flat panel video screen or on a
digital news book anywhere that is convenient
for you. With this tablet it is also easy to
differentiate between the electronic papers:
they can be presented with their brand
identities, with the typography and the design
that are familiar. The tablet is expected to be a
real alternative for mass media, like the printed
magazine, in ten to fifteen years from now.
All this does not necessarily mean
that the paper age comes to an end. As
mentioned before, in the foreseeable future
printed magazines will survive, perhaps partly
or mainly in an adapted form. Paper as a
carrier of information may also have a bright
future. Perhaps mainly under electronic
conditions, as can be derived from the results
of a research project at the Media Laboratory
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at
Boston USA, now in cooperation with Philips.
This project aims at creating paper with
microencapsulated cells that can freely rotate.
Applying low-power electrical charge to these
capsules change their orientation and thus the
same cells can display different images. Last
year Philips announced that they made
important progress toward this so-called
'electronic paper', in favour of full colour pages
and moving images of this plastic paper.
Moreover, Dai Nippon has been developing a
digital, paper-like medium for information
display that can be electronically erased and
thermally rewritten many times. Practical
applications for this rewritable medium range
from plastic cards on which the displayed
information must change with some frequency,
to sheets of facsimile and printer paper that
can be immediately recycled after having
served their purpose.
To conclude
‘Archeologie Magazine’ notices every
day that there are still many people who prefer
paper, who like to read and who choose to
read about something other than the purely
amusing and transient. Such people like to
read about history and footprints from the past,
as an alternative for everyday audiovisual
productions containing more or less brute
violence and other ‘entertainment’. They have
discovered that there is more on earth than the
production and use of information and
communication for pure commercial reasons
only.
However, this does not mean that
printed media like our magazine may rest on
their laurels. Magazines on paper have still a
reasonable future, but to survive they must
adapt
themselves
to
the
changed
circumstances, especially in the electronic
field. Certain features and service columns in
printed papers like agenda, sports and other
events with strong moving images could be
presented better, faster, more immediately, if
they can be transmitted by electronic
components. On the other hand, printed media
can bring more background information and
highly qualified pictures.
Furthermore, to attract more readers and
advertisers it will become more and more
necessary for printed media to present the
printed products tailor-made, and more
individualised than before. Images, info
graphics and colours in printed media must be
improved more than ever. The printed media
should recognise that they are no longer the
only supplier of information or even the
information monopolist, but that they have to
share the information market with a growing
number of information carriers. By recognising
this, they must look for co-operation with their
electronic competitors.
With the use of new electronic
developments the printed model can be
improved. The transmission of pictures from a
digital camera via laptop computer and mobile
phone to PC’s in the printing department of
printed media is a start of such an approach.
That kind of transmission and printing mode
39
www.PalArch.nl
uses the benefits from both newsprint,
electronic and digital facilities. The electronic
future may bring more challenges than threats
for
archaeology
and
archaeological
magazines.
Lou Lichtenberg
Editor in chief ‘Archeologie magazine’
email: [email protected]
Colophon
The Newsletter is an initiative of the
PalArch Foundation and is edited by A.J.
Veldmeijer ([email protected]) and S.M.
van Roode ([email protected]). The illustration
editing is done by A.M. Hense (www.egyptarchaeology.com/,
[email protected]).
The Newsletter is offered for free to the
supporters
of
the
Foundation
(see
http://www.palarch.nl/information.htm,
3.6
Membership); back issues will be offered for
sale at the website (www.PalArch.nl).
Any questions and reactions regarding
the Newsletter, the Foundation or the
webbased Netherlands scientific journal should
be addressed to [email protected]. The
address to which correspondence can be send
is: PalArch Foundation, Mezquitalaan 23, 1064
NS, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
The procedure for work submitted to be
published in the Newsletter follows the same
rules and procedures as scientific publications
and
can
be
found
at
http://www.palarch.nl/information.htm,
4.
Submission.
Copyright of the Newsletter
Copyright © 2003 PalArch Foundation
The author retains the copyright, but
agrees that the PalArch Foundation has the
non-exclusive right to publish the work in
electronic or other formats. The author also
agrees that the Foundation has the right to
distribute copies (electronic and/or hard
copies), to include the work in archives and
compile volumes. The Foundation will use the
original
work
as
first
published
at
www.PalArch.nl.
The author is responsible for obtaining
the permission of the use of illustrations
(drawings, photographs or other visual images)
made by others than the author. The author
can be requested to submit proof of this
permission to the PalArch Foundation. The
downloaded (and/or printed) versions may not
be duplicated in hard copy or machine
readable form or reproduced photographically,
and they may not be redistributed, transmitted,
translated or stored on microfilm, nor in
40
www.PalArch.nl
electronic databases other than for
single use by the person that downloaded the
file. Commercial use or redistribution can only
be realized after consultation with and with
written permission of the PalArch Foundation.
Please note that no responsibility is
assumed by the PalArch Foundation for any
injury and/or damage to persons or property as
a matter of products liability, negligence or
otherwise, or from any use of operation of any
methods, products, instructions or ideas
contained in the material herein. The
Foundation cannot be held responsible for any
damage to the product due to package,
transport or otherwise. The Foundation
accepts no liability for the proper transmission
of electronic communication nor for any delay
in its receipt.
41

PDF file

Transcription

Similar documents

PIONEERS AND DRIFTERS, COWBOYS AND INDIANS

HP-U-505 MSI.indd

Memberships from Coast to Coast and Everywhere In Between

Arnhem Open Air Museum Holland in one day!

Saturday, June 16th 2:00 to 5:00 pm Tickets: $15

Family Fun Day - Coastal Discovery Museum

Let`s Create a NATIONAL SUPPORT MUSEUM

Creation Experience Museum Review

In Search of Indigineous London Info Session Presentation

SS1 - Musées de la civilisation