Jysk Arkæologisk Selskab i mere end 50 år

The Jutland Archaeological SocietyFor more than fifty yearsThe Jutland Archaeological Society was founded in 1951 (figs. 1-2). According to the objects clause, it is the purpose of the society to ”support archaeological research through the largest possible participation of all interested. It should make archaeology accessible to the public by – among other things – publishing an annual and a number of scientific publications, by having yearly meetings, excursions to larger excavations and in any other way, which the governing body sees fit.”The Jutland Archaeological Society was therefore not meant to deal just with matters concerning Jutland, and if one looks at the activities of the society during the first ten years the object was obviously more extensive. Whereas more than half of the articles in the annual Kuml dealt with the Prehistory and Middle Ages in Denmark, the second half included the related disciplines of ethnology, ethnography, philology and science, and also classical archaeology and the archaeology of the Near East – the latter because of the Danish expeditions to the countries along the Arabian Gulf.One initiative, which helped in making the society known, was the institution of the J.J.A.Worsaae Medal in 1956 as a celebration of the fifth anniversary of the society. This is a gold medal and a sum of money, which is given for special merits within Nordic archaeology. One may have a critical approach to the fact that a narrow circle of colleagues are handing nice medals to each other. However, the institution of the Worsaae Medal with its stress on ”Nordic archaeology” has increased the public understanding of the Jutland Archaeological Society as the representative of a judicious mixture of local, national, Nordic and international interests (fig. 3).Another cunning move was made in connection with the fifth anniversary, when twenty-eight leading archaeologists from seventeen European countries and the Soviet Union, the United States, and Mexico were appointed corresponding members. At the tenth anniversary this list was supplemented by another eleven highly respected foreign scholars. The reason for appointing a person as a corresponding member was ”credits within archaeological research”, and by this move the society and its activities no doubt became known in the right places.From the start, summaries in the most common foreign languages in Kuml and in the monographs (which were later to an increasing extent published in a principal