In memoriam Dr. Maria Hopf: 13th September 1914 to 24th August 2008

Abstract

Maria Hopf, one of the pioneers of European archaeobotany, passed away on the 24th of August 2008, a short time before her 94th birthday. Born on September 13th 1914 in Wettin, near Halle a.d. Saale, she studied botany from 1941 to 1944 and obtained her doctorate in 1947 with a thesis on soil microbes. First working in plant physiology and phytopathology, she started with studies on the anatomy of recent wheat glumes and grains in 1952–1956 at the MaxPlanck-Institut fur Zuchtungsforschung in Berlin-Dahlem. Here she was inspired by Elisabeth Schiemann, who introduced her also to the history of cultivated plants. Then she moved to the Romisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum (RGZM) in Mainz, where she worked for one year, still paid by the Max-Planck Society, becoming part of the staff of the RGZM in 1957 as a scientific assistant and since May 1961 as head of the division for archaeobotany which was formed by herself. Beside her own research, students from various countries visited her and started their first steps in identifying botanical macro-remains in Mainz, or received competent advice. At the end of September 1979 she retired officially, however she remained still active with numerous research projects. During her scientific career in archaeobotany she worked in a wide spatial and temporal range, from Europe to Asia, and Palaeolithic to modern sites. She was in contact with excavators all over the Old World and investigated their botanical macro-remains. More than 100 publications, many of them produced after her retirement, document her never-ending activity. Beside many investigations in Germany, she had special interests in Spain and the Balkans which resulted in numerous site reports. A milestone and summary of her scientific work is Domestication of plants in the Old World. The origin and spread of cultivated plants in West Asia, Europe and the Nile Valley, which she wrote together with Daniel Zohary first in 1988, and which was out of print after a few years. In the meantime, the third edition was published in 2000, updated with new archaeological and archaeobotanical data and sites as well as references and incorporating the most recent findings about the genetic relations between domesticated plants and their wild ancestors (Zohary and Hopf 2000). Maria Hopf was among the founders of the International Work Group for Palaeoethnobotany in 1968, at that time F. Bittmann (&) K.-E. Behre Lower Saxony Institute for Historical Coastal Research, Viktoriastr. 26/28, 26382 Wilhelmshaven, Germany e-mail: bittmann@nihk.de