srecko brodar (1893–1987), a naturalist and schoolteacher in Celje, was able to lay foundations for Paleolithic archaeology. In 1928 he excavated the potočka zijalka Cave, and the results proved to be crucial for the interpretation of the glaciation in the Alps (see J. Bayer and S. Brodar, “Die Potočka Höhle, eine Hochstation der Aurignacschwankung in die Ostalpen,” in Prähistorica, vol. 1 [Vienna 1928]). In the 1930s he extended his research to other sites in Slovenia and Yugoslavia (see S. Brodar, “Das Paläo lithikum in Jugoslawien (The Palaeolithic in Yugoslavia),” Quartar 1: 140–172[1938]).

Reconstruction of Archaeology and Definite Establishment of the National Disciplinary Framework (1945– )
Political and Social Conditions and New Beginnings

After 1945, when the king’s rule in Yugoslavia was abolished, the Yugoslav Communist Party took over the government and started the process of “rebuilding the society” on a new, Marxist-Leninist basis. Another important political change was the annexation of the Littoral and Istria back from Italy to the Yugoslav Republics of Slovenia and Croatia.

These political and ideological changes had important consequences for archaeology. Lozar was a political opponent of the Communist-controlled Liberation Front during World War II, and he left the country in 1945. Mole, who had returned from Poland in 1942 and accepted a professorship at the Italian-controlled University of Ljubljana, also left in 1945. And Saria, an ethnic German who has been openly sympathetic to the German greater national cause, went to Graz, in Austria, immediately after the Italian occupation of Ljubljana in 1941. There were also experiences entailing Italian and German abuses of archaeology in Slovenia in the prewar and war years. The Italian annexation of the Littoral and Istria (from 1918 to 1943) and subsequent occupation of western Slovenia (from 1941 to 1943) were “justified” with claims about the allegedly historical borders of Roman Italy, and many individuals in Italian institutional archaeology in these regions were involved in providing “scientific” evidence for such claims. And during World War II Germans conducted several excavations in northern Slovenia in order to prove the existence of early medieval Germans south of the Alps and to provide a supposedly scientific basis for Adolf Hitler’s project of ethnic cleansing and the annexation of Styria to the Third Reich.

The almost complete absence of professional archaeologists and the lack of an infrastructural framework demanded an urgent and complete reform of archaeological science in Slovenia. The leading scholars from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana and from the Slovene Academy of Arts and Sciences played a prominent role in renewing the institutional framework. Two new institutions were established—the Department of Archaeology in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana, begun in 1946, and the Archaeological Commission of the Slovene Academy of Arts and Sciences, which was founded in 1947 and later known as the Institute of Archaeology. The first two professors of archaeology were appointed in 1946 and 1947: Klemenc for classical and Roman archaeology and Korošec for prehistoric and Slavic archaeology. paleolithic archaeology also entered the curriculum with the 1946 appointment of Brodar as professor for Quaternary studies in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural History, all at the University of Ljubljana. Klemenc and josip korošec were also among the founders of the Archaeological Commission, together with Milko Kos, a historian and chancellor of the University of Ljubljana, and France Stele, an art historian and conservator. A new generation of scholars also took leading positions in the National Museum. jože kastelic, a classical philologist, became the director of the museum in 1945, and stane gabrovec, an archaeologist and classical philologist, started to work in the Archaeological Department there in 1948.

The problem of repairing and maintaining monuments was even more urgent, particularly because of the war damage. In August 1945 an Office for the Protection and Scientific Research of Cultural and Natural Monuments was established (later renamed the Office for the Protection of Natural and Cultural Heritage),