committed collaborators, who became the outstanding archaeologists of the interwar period. These included Ludwik Sawicki (1893–1972), stefan krukowski (1890–1982), and leon kozŁowski (1892–1944). Majewski funded a program of field research just for them, thus becoming one of the major contributors to the revival of Polish archaeology. He also published a number of scientific papers, some of them concerning the methodology of conducting excavations. It was through Majewski’s support that the Warsaw Center assumed a dominant role in Polish archaeology from the end of the nineteenth century until 1918, when Poland regained its independence.

Meanwhile, Cracow University had produced an outstanding prehistory researcher by the name of Włodzimierz Demetrykiewicz (1859–1937). The author of a modern regional synthesis of the archaeology of Galicia (1896), in which a wider cultural context was considered and a typological method was applied, Demetrykiewicz was the first Polish archaeologist to write the Paleolithic prehistory of Poland. He defended his postdoctoral dissertation at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow in 1905 and in 1919 was granted the title of professor. He became the founder of a renowned archaeological center. Among his most successful students were Michał Drewko, Tadeusz Reyman, Józef Żurowski, and, indirectly, józef kostrzewski and Leon Kozłowski. At the same time, the Lvov Center was led by Karol Hadaczek (1873–1914), a professor of prehistory and classical archaeology.

The improvement of the political situation under Russian occupation led to the foundation of prehistory departments at some regional museums, for example, in Płock, Włocławek, Kalisz, Piotr-ków Trybunalski, Kielce, Lublin, Sandomierz, Radom, and Łowicz. Private collections were still popular and numerous, and some were quite large. Vigorously developing museums were a precondition to the development of Polish prehistory. They bridged the gap in its development, providing research collections and training and stimulating interest, until it became possible to study archaeology at the university level.

In the Wielkopolska region, which remained under German occupation, German archaeology dominated. The Provincial Museum (from 1904 known as the Kaiser Friedrich Museum) in Poznań was the center of archaeological activities. The Polish Museum of the Society of the Friends of Sciences was led, at that time, by Bolesław Erzepki. Four volumes of the Album Zabytków Przedhistorycznych (The Catalog of Prehistoric Monuments) for the Poznań region were issued by Erzepki, Klemens Koehler, and Zygmunt Zakrzewski. In 1914 the position of the director of the Polish Museum was occupied by Kostrzewski (1885–1969), who had just defended his doctoral dissertation in Berlin under gustaf kossinna. In the same year he wrote a synthesis of the history of the Wielkopolska region. The main characteristic of the first two decades of the twentieth century was the appearance of regional syntheses (e.g., about Galicia, Eastern Galicia, Wielkopolska, Gdańsk [Danzig], and Danzig Pomerania, as well as an attempted one for latvia).

Poland regained its political independence in November 1918, and the state of Polish archaeology changed dramatically. An independent Poland created conditions conducive to the unrestricted development of science. In addition to the already operating university institutes of archaeology in Cracow (under Włodzimierz Demetrykiewicz) and in Lvov (under Leon Kozłowski), new departments were founded in Warsaw (under professor Erazm Majewski and, after his death in 1922, Włodzimierz Antoniewicz) and at Poznań, in the newly founded university in 1919 under professor Józef Kostrzewski. Subject to the law on the preservation of monuments issued by the new Polish government in 1918, keepers of prehistoric monuments for particular regions of Poland were appointed. These were united in the Group of Keepers of Prehistoric Monuments, a central body whose objective was to protect and create an inventory of archaeological monuments. The law officially acknowledged the importance of archaeological monuments to the national heritage of Poland.