P.J.R. Modderman Foundation
The P.J.R. Modderman Foundation is affiliated to the Faculty of Archaeology and aims to promote and facilitate archaeological research, in the broadest sense, for and by employees of the faculty.
The foundation tries to achieve this goal, among other things, by providing financial contributions to archaeological researchers, research projects and academic publications. The foundation has ANBI status, being an institution with a general interest objective. As such, the foundation has an obligation to publicly publish its annual reports every year.
The Modderman Foundation's income consists of grants, donations and bequests. Founded in November 1996, the foundation has already been able to lend its support to a very wide range of activities, which, depending on the composition of the board, have regularly shifted emphasis.
Archol Grant
The P.J.R Modderman Foundation is particularly pleased that an annual grant has been added to its activities since 2025. The archaeological research company Archol BV has expressed an intention to do so. Archol is part of Leiden University (within the Libertatis Ergo Holding) and has had very close ties with the Faculty of Archaeology from day one. Faculty researchers are regularly involved in Archol's commercial research projects.
All staff and PhD students of the Faculty of Archaeology can participate in the annual call (soon also in English). See the call for more information, conditions and deadline.
About P.J.R. (Pieter Jan Remees) Modderman
Pieter Modderman was born on 10 March 1919 in Sumatra and died in 2005. He studied social geography at the University of Utrecht and obtained his PhD at the University of Groningen in 1945 with a thesis entitled ‘On the genesis and significance of the Zuiderzee area’. Among other things, it deals with the archaeological remains discovered during the reclamation of the Northeast Polder. The site of shipwreck NM 107 near Emmeloord is still referred to in archaeological literature as “Modderman's kogge”, and is of historical importance for several reasons.
Pieter Modderman worked at the Stichting voor de Bodemkartering (Stiboka), the Biological Archaeological Institute (BAI) of the University of Groningen and the Rijksdienst voor het Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek (ROB, now: RCE). In 1962, he was appointed professor of Cultural Prehistory of Western and Central Europe at Leiden University, in the then newly established Interfaculty of Geography and Prehistory. That appointment led to the establishment of the IPL: Institute of Prehistory Leiden, located in a residential house on the Breestraat in Leiden. The interfaculty eventually merged into the Faculty of Archaeology as we know it today, housed in the Van Steenis building. Professor Modderman was professor until 1982 and was succeeded by Leendert Pieter Louwe Kooijmans, who would go on to found Archol BV in 1997.
Professor Modderman's main academic contribution undoubtedly lies with the earliest Neolithic period in the Netherlands. With large-scale excavations, on a very modern footing, of the villages of the prehistoric people we now count to the so-called Linear Band Ceramic (LBK) culture. Findings at Elsloo, Stein, Sittard and later at Hienheim (D) are still important for the (typo)chronology of LBK pottery and house plans. Internationally, he was of great significance due to the methodology of large-scale settlement research.