sciences and arts in Carniola. The idea for the excavations came from Ettiene Marie Siauve (?–1813), a French archaeologist who was a member of the Académie Celtique as well as the French military commissioner in the Illyrian Provinces. Vodnik recorded these activities in his Itineraria (1809). Siauve himself published a book on the ancient history and antiquities of the Slovene lands, entitled De Antiquis Norici viis, urbibus et finibus epistola (Verona 1811).

Beginnings of the Scientific Discipline of Archaeology

A decisive step forward was the establishment of the museums and heritage protection service in the Austrian Empire in the first half of the nineteenth century. Provincial museums, which covered the territory of Slovenia, were located in Graz in 1811 around Styria, in Ljubljana in 1821 around Carniola, and in Klagenfurt in 1844 around Carinthia. Local museums were established later in Celje (1893), Ptuj (1893), Maribor (1909), and Koper (1911). The Littoral Province was left without a provincial museum, but the role was filled by the Trieste municipal museum (1875).

The Provincial Museum at Ljubljana played a decisive role in the development of the archaeological discipline in Slovenia. Although the museum was established in 1821, its archaeological activities did not start until the mid-1870s with the excavations of the prehistoric pile-dwellings in the ljubljansko barje (Iron Age sites in Carniola). Challenged by the discoveries of pile-dwellings on Swiss lakes and encouraged by the Anthropological Society from Vienna, dragotin dezman (1821–1889), the curator of the museum, directed the first large excavation in the history of Slovene archaeology, from 1875 to 1877.

Dezman’s close collaboration with the Anthropological and Prehistoric Societies in Vienna proved to be decisive for further developments of this discipline in Slovenia, and in less than fifteen years (from 1875 to 1889) he succeeded in providing a firm basis for its disciplinary framework. Dezman, being a zoologist, botanist, and geologist, developed an anthropological and evolutionary concept of prehistoric archaeology; contrary to the long tradition of antiquarian and historical research in Slovenia. In this short period he excavated a series of sites (Ljubljansko Barje) and published the first synthesis on the prehistory of Carniola (“Prähistorische Ansiedlungen und Begrabnisstätten,” in Krain I. Bericht, Denkschriften der k.k. Akademie der Wissenschaften, Matematisch-naturwissenschaftliche Classe 42, 1–54 [Vienna 1880]; “Zur Vorgeschichte Krains,” in Die österreichisch-ungarisch Monarchie in Wort und Bild, Kärnten und Krain, 305–324 [Vienna 1891]). He tried to apply the most recent developments and standards in prehistoric science in his work. For example, he defined the la tène period in Slovenia only a few years after O. Tischler had proposed the division of the Iron Age. His research results were highly esteemed by his colleagues in austria. The Austrian Anthropological Society was very interested in his work and held its annual meeting in Ljubljana in 1879. At the end of his career Dezman succeeded in lobbying for a new museum palace (opened in 1888), whose archaeological collections and museum guide (Führer durch das Krainische Landes-Museum Rudolfinum in Laibach [Ljubljana 1888]) became the pride of the scientific community in Carniola.

Alfons Müllner (1840–1918) succeeded Dezman in the museum in 1889. Müllner had already published some important archaeological and historical works in the period prior to his transfer to the museum. These included Archaologische Excurse durch Steiermark und Krain (1878, 1880), the first topographic work in Slovenian archaeology, and a monograph on the Roman site of emona (1879). Despite the fact that he was also a naturalist, Müllner applied a different concept of archaeology in the museum—that of typological and chronological principles of artifact analysis—and he rearranged prehistoric collections accordingly. He published Typische formen aus der Sammmlungen des krainischen Landesmuseums “Rudolphinum” in Laibach (1900), a catalog of key forms of artifacts for prehistoric Carniola. However, in rearranging the collections, Müllner did not keep records on contexts, and a great deal of contextual data was irreparably lost.

Walter Schmid (1875–1951), who studied in