Professor dr. W.J.H. (Willem) Willems
In 2014 Willem was Professor of Archaeological Heritage Management. From 2006 till 2013 he was the dean of the Faculty of Archaeology at the University of Leiden in The Netherlands. Apart from being administrator, he tried to do research. Professor Willems's main research interests were in all aspects of archaeological heritage resource management and in the archaeology of the northwestern Roman provinces and the Roman frontier. He held a Chair in both fields, so within the Faculty he was responsible for the chair group of archaeological heritage management and he participated in the chair group of historical archaeology.
The particular combination is a result of the way in which my career developed (for a CV, see elsewhere on this site). I was born in 1950 and grew up in a village on the Meuse, close to the German border, in a street still partly in ruins from WW2. After military service, I went to the University of Amsterdam to study anthropology and archaeology. It was the 70’s, and I wanted some firsthand experience of the ‘new archaeology’ in those days, and that took me to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA for a graduate year. The experience gave me a different perspective on the Roman occupation of the Low Countries. I had been working for the Dutch State Archaeological Service (ROB, now the State Service for Cultural Heritage) for some years at the excavations in Nijmegen - Ulpia Noviomagus and decided to do a PhD on the interaction between Roman colonizers and native Batavians. My dissertation entitled ‘Romans and Batavians’ was published in 1986 and I have kept working in Roman archaeology ever since. The picture above is a reconstruction drawing of the Roman villa at Voerendaal where I excavated for several years in the mid 1980's
I became project manager for the Roman period and deputy director in 1985. Two years later I was offered an honorary professorship in provincial-Roman archaeology in Leiden, that I accepted in addition to my work for the State Service, and from 1989-1999 I was the director of the ROB and State Archaeologist of the Netherlands. From the 80’s to the 90’s, I gradually developed an academic interest in archaeological heritage management and the social role of archaeology. I was deeply influenced by what I learned from working in a committee of experts from the Council of Europe that drafted what later became the Malta Convention, and a lecture trip through the USA for the American Institute of Archaeology, where colleagues were coping with NAGPRA. I was then involved with the restructuring of the Dutch archaeological heritage management, first as ROB director, later at the Netherlands Ministry of Culture, followed by my appointment as Chief Inspector for Archaeology. In this capacity I worked until 2006 at the State Inspectorate for Cultural Heritage. At the international level, I served as President of the EAA, the European Association of Archaeologists and I was the founding President of the EAC, the Europae Archaeologiae Consilium, the international association of State Archaeologists of all European countries. In 2006 I changed to Leiden to take up the deanship, and also received an appointment as professor of archaeological heritage management in global context.
Outside Leiden, I am involved with archaeological heritage resources in various other ways. The most important at the moment - and certainly in the amount of my time - is that I am co-president (together with Doug Comer from the USA) of the ICOMOS Committee for Archaeological Heritage Management (ICAHM) and occasionally serve as a specialist in the evaluation of nominations for World Heritage Sites. I also own a small consultancy business called “B&W Raadgevende Archeologen”, that I continued after the untimely death of my partner Roel Brandt. Further, there is my involvement with the Blue Shield, through ICOMOS but also as an officer in the Dutch Reserves, where I have recently retired from a small unit of ‘heritage protection officers’ in the Corps of Engineers. And finally, I am board member of the Centre for International Heritage Activities (CIE), a vibrant independent, non-profit organization for international knowledge exchange about the heritage of the European expansion and international heritage cooperation. In 2010 we started a great new project on Robben Island in South Africa, initiated by CIE and SAHRA, the South African Heritage Resources Agency, that also involves my chair group at the faculty. Another cooperation that has started in 2011 is the Leiden-Stanford Heritage Network (LSHN) that is intended to bring together researchers from Leiden and Stanford Universities working on heritage.
An entirely new project called Nexus1492 is about to start in 2013. Last year, prof. C. Hofman who holds the Leiden Chair for Caribbean Archaeology, myself and colleagues Davies (VU Amsterdam) and Brandes (Konstanz) succeeded in obtaining an ERC Synergy grant for this project, that will run from 2013 to 2019. NEXUS1492 intends to shed new light on the colonisation of the Caribbean, the nexus of interactions between the New and Old World. Columbus first set foot in the Caribbean in 1492. Current understandings of this event dictate that indigenous societies were enslaved and completely destroyed within 25 years of the first contact with Europeans. However, our knowledge is based on European colonial documents, which are biased. The aim of NEXUS 1492 is to re-write the history of these colonisation processes from the indigenous Caribbean perspective, using a strongly multidisciplinary approach. My own part will primarily be aimed at he protection and management of cultural heritage and investigate its valuation in present day society.
The particular combination is a result of the way in which my career developed (for a CV, see elsewhere on this site). I was born in 1950 and grew up in a village on the Meuse, close to the German border, in a street still partly in ruins from WW2. After military service, I went to the University of Amsterdam to study anthropology and archaeology. It was the 70’s, and I wanted some firsthand experience of the ‘new archaeology’ in those days, and that took me to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA for a graduate year. The experience gave me a different perspective on the Roman occupation of the Low Countries. I had been working for the Dutch State Archaeological Service (ROB, now the State Service for Cultural Heritage) for some years at the excavations in Nijmegen - Ulpia Noviomagus and decided to do a PhD on the interaction between Roman colonizers and native Batavians. My dissertation entitled ‘Romans and Batavians’ was published in 1986 and I have kept working in Roman archaeology ever since. The picture above is a reconstruction drawing of the Roman villa at Voerendaal where I excavated for several years in the mid 1980's
I became project manager for the Roman period and deputy director in 1985. Two years later I was offered an honorary professorship in provincial-Roman archaeology in Leiden, that I accepted in addition to my work for the State Service, and from 1989-1999 I was the director of the ROB and State Archaeologist of the Netherlands. From the 80’s to the 90’s, I gradually developed an academic interest in archaeological heritage management and the social role of archaeology. I was deeply influenced by what I learned from working in a committee of experts from the Council of Europe that drafted what later became the Malta Convention, and a lecture trip through the USA for the American Institute of Archaeology, where colleagues were coping with NAGPRA. I was then involved with the restructuring of the Dutch archaeological heritage management, first as ROB director, later at the Netherlands Ministry of Culture, followed by my appointment as Chief Inspector for Archaeology. In this capacity I worked until 2006 at the State Inspectorate for Cultural Heritage. At the international level, I served as President of the EAA, the European Association of Archaeologists and I was the founding President of the EAC, the Europae Archaeologiae Consilium, the international association of State Archaeologists of all European countries. In 2006 I changed to Leiden to take up the deanship, and also received an appointment as professor of archaeological heritage management in global context.
Outside Leiden, I am involved with archaeological heritage resources in various other ways. The most important at the moment - and certainly in the amount of my time - is that I am co-president (together with Doug Comer from the USA) of the ICOMOS Committee for Archaeological Heritage Management (ICAHM) and occasionally serve as a specialist in the evaluation of nominations for World Heritage Sites. I also own a small consultancy business called “B&W Raadgevende Archeologen”, that I continued after the untimely death of my partner Roel Brandt. Further, there is my involvement with the Blue Shield, through ICOMOS but also as an officer in the Dutch Reserves, where I have recently retired from a small unit of ‘heritage protection officers’ in the Corps of Engineers. And finally, I am board member of the Centre for International Heritage Activities (CIE), a vibrant independent, non-profit organization for international knowledge exchange about the heritage of the European expansion and international heritage cooperation. In 2010 we started a great new project on Robben Island in South Africa, initiated by CIE and SAHRA, the South African Heritage Resources Agency, that also involves my chair group at the faculty. Another cooperation that has started in 2011 is the Leiden-Stanford Heritage Network (LSHN) that is intended to bring together researchers from Leiden and Stanford Universities working on heritage.
An entirely new project called Nexus1492 is about to start in 2013. Last year, prof. C. Hofman who holds the Leiden Chair for Caribbean Archaeology, myself and colleagues Davies (VU Amsterdam) and Brandes (Konstanz) succeeded in obtaining an ERC Synergy grant for this project, that will run from 2013 to 2019. NEXUS1492 intends to shed new light on the colonisation of the Caribbean, the nexus of interactions between the New and Old World. Columbus first set foot in the Caribbean in 1492. Current understandings of this event dictate that indigenous societies were enslaved and completely destroyed within 25 years of the first contact with Europeans. However, our knowledge is based on European colonial documents, which are biased. The aim of NEXUS 1492 is to re-write the history of these colonisation processes from the indigenous Caribbean perspective, using a strongly multidisciplinary approach. My own part will primarily be aimed at he protection and management of cultural heritage and investigate its valuation in present day society.
