of Archaeology and Ethnology. As a state academic institution following official political priorities, the institute soon became the main center for archaeological research in Poland. Since 1957 it has published the journal Archeologia Polski (Archaeology of Poland), which is currently the most important Polish periodical in the field. Archeologia Polona, published in the main European languages to make the achievements of Polish archaeologists available to a foreign audience, was founded a year later.

Strong efforts were made to promote Marxist archaeology, but it was never widely accepted. The whole postwar period has been dominated by a positivist approach, concentrating on the classification of material and the study of its chronology and systematics. However, there were other attempts to problematize archaeological research, such as those by Jan Żak (1923–1990), who defined prehistory as the study of the development of the conscious and purposeful activity of prehistoric human communities intended to reduce their dependence on nature. His works focused on the issue of so-called discontinuity, the discontinuation of social existence.

There were a number of spectacular excavations during the postwar period, such as those in Nowa Huta related to the construction of huge steelworks just east of Cracow. This site was in a fertile agricultural area, and its settlements dated back to the Neolithic period. Polish archaeologists also took part in a number of successful excavations abroad, especially in the 1960s. These included a program that researched the deserted villages of France, studies on the beginnings of Venice and the Longobard settlements in northern italy, as well as research in Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, spain, India, Cuba, Sudan, Tunisia, and in other countries of the former USSR.

A list of the most outstanding postwar scholars includes Włodzimierz Hołubowicz (1908– 1962), Konrad Jaz·dz·ewski (1908–1985), Zdzi -sław Rajewski (1907–1974), Tadeusz Wiślański (1931–1989), and Jan Żak, as well as Zbigniew Bukowski, Waldemar Chmielewski, Kazimierz Godłowski, Witold Hensel, Janusz Krzysztof Kozłowski, Stefan Karol Kozłowski, Zofia Kurnatowska, Lech Leciejewicz, Jan Machnik, Andrzej Nadolski, Jerzy Okulicz, Romuald Schild, Stanisław Tabaczyński, and Jerzy Wielowiejski.

By 1980 there were some 700 Polish scholars active in archaeology, and this resulted in an intensification of the field research. For instance, in the 1960s there was seasonal fieldwork on some 300 sites. The areas of major interest became the early and late Middle Ages and the Modern Age. Prehistoric archaeology has been more and more distinctly supplemented by the archaeology of historical periods.

The so-called Archaeological Photograph of Poland (Archeologiczne Zdjecie Polski), started in 1979 as a continuation of the nineteenth-century archaeological maps, has been particularly interesting. The project, which is still in progress, covers the whole territory of Poland, and an immense database is now being gradually computerized.

Among the important books published during this period is Konrad Jaz·dz·ewski’s Prehistory of Central Europe (1981), also published in German as Urgeschichte Mitteleuropas (1984). Other significant syntheses of the prehistory of Polish lands, such as the Prehistory of Poland (1965) by Józef Kostrzewski, Waldemar Chmielewski, and Konrad Jaz·dz·ewski, have been published as well. Another important work is the five-volume Prehistory of the Lands of Poland (1975– 1981), published under the general supervision of Witold Hensel.

Since World War II the number of Polish archaeologists has increased dramatically, and research was grown increasingly specialized. A more detailed account of changes in the discipline would have to focus on each of the existing research centers and/or the specific characteristics of the study of particular periods of prehistory.

Arkadiusz Marciniak

See also

Lithuania