Abstract
While the general history of archaeology has received a growing interest lately1, these efforts still lack a common research-guiding agenda. Furthermore, most of the studies still concentrate on biographies and event history. The embedding of archaeology in the structures and conditions of its time is still a kind of terra incognita. The few well known publications (e. g. Hudson 1981; Kristiansen 1981; Patterson 1986; 1995) emphasize the gap only more. The lack of a significant amount of literature especially on the social history of archaeology is all the more surprising as the early interest in archaeology shows a clear social bias: archaeology was (and still is?) a recreational activity for the educated and the well-off. While Hudson’s book in particular is very readable, it is clearly meant to provide only a very broad picture. Along with the other publications mentioned above it is now somewhat dated; the lack of recent works on this topic thus highlight the lack of interest in the social history of archaeology even more.2 However, this essay does not deal with this deplorable fact, but seeks to present some ‘hard’ data on only one, albeit important activity of early archaeological excavations, particularly those of burial mounds. Its focus is on Southern Germany and on graves from the early Iron Age.3
Highlights
The lack of a significant amount of literature especially on the social history of archaeology is all the more surprising as the early interest in archaeology shows a clear social bias: archaeology was a recreational activity for the educated and the well-off
The earliest records concerning the excavations of burial mounds in Southern Germany date back to 17th and 18th centuries, and surprisingly for their time, they were quite thorough
The excavators of Iron Age burial mounds can be roughly divided into three groups (Figure 3 with Table 1)
Summary
The earliest records concerning the excavations of burial mounds in Southern Germany date back to 17th and 18th centuries, and surprisingly for their time, they were quite thorough. The illustration demonstrates a very tight connection to the political situation at each point of time It is remarkable how clearly the revolutionary events around 1848 and the wars of 1870/71, 1914–1918 and 1939–1945 are discernible. It needs to be pointed out that the development sketched above is not totally the same for Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg (Figure 2) The reasons for this still merit closer scrutiny.. For the beginning of the 1980s the curve of Baden-Württemberg shows a sharp bend, while the one of Bavaria is still steep One reason for this could be due to the founding of the ‘Beihefte der Bayerischen Vorgeschichtsblätter’ in the 1980s, which made thorough reports on all excavation activities possible. In adjoining regions different tendencies can be found: the development in the Northwest of Switzerland, for example, is completely different (Kurz 1997: 4 Abb. 1).
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