Forord

Resumé

Carl Johan Becker · 60 years

The basis of archaeological research is work in the field: the trowel quickly resolves problems which could otherwise be discussed for years without a final solution. Happy is the archaeologist, therefore, who has mastered both the technique of excavation and the extensive literature. Carl Johan Becker, the erudite professor of Nordic Archaeology and European Pre­history at the University of Copenhagen, is such a man.

In his school holidays, Becker searched Sejrø Bugt in north-western Zealand for artefacts and was already carrying out serious excavations, for instance at Tjørnemark in 1932. In 1933, when he matriculated, Becker 'published' Tjørnemark in a tribute to Langeland's famous Jens Winther on his 70th birthday, with three fellow students: Johannes Brønsted's first archaeological team.

In the subsequent forty years Becker's indefatigable archaeological activity has been divided between work in the field - from 1934 to I 952 as Assistant Curator in the Prehistoric Department of the National Museum - and work in the study. The results have been published in numerous works, including articles in KUML. Since 1952 he has occupied the Chair at Copenhagen and hatched many Masters in archaeology.

During the first years, Becker's excavations most often occurred around Sejrø Bugt, for example of Stone Age houses and settlement layers at Ørnekul on Nekselø and of Ertebølle sites on Ordrupnæs. During the last twenty years, the trowel has been wielded mostly in Jutland, in excavation of villages from the 1st century B.C. in Ringkøbing County.

At the National Museum, where C.J. Becker still has his haunts, at the University, and in lectures to the Oldskriftselskab and Videnskabernes Selskab, he is an elegant stylist. In the field he shows another side, as we see him here; in working clothes pondering the day's result with a Carlsberg, planning further excavations on the Cimbrian peninsula, to the prehistory of which his practical and theoretical research has contributed much.

P.V. Glob