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would return there in 1924, 1925, 1928, and 1935, as well.) The journeys in 1908 and 1909 were for the purpose of gathering materials on the Bronze Age cultures of East Russia, taking Tallgren first to Saint Petersburg and Moscow and then on to Kazan, Kostroma, and Arkhangelsk. He was able to excavate or inspect a number of sites and worked at Turovskoe (site of the famous Galich treasure) and later at Minusinsk, among other locations. His first expedition to Russia was preceded by a brief period spent at the british museum in London and the Musée de Saint-Germain in Paris, where Tallgren studied Asian antiquities and research literature that were not available in Finland. He received grants for this purpose from the Finnish Archaeological Society and support from his old mentor Aspelin. The results of his research appeared in his 1911 thesis, entitled “The Copper and Bronze Ages of North and East Russia.” Although the work was criticized for faulty construction, inaccuracies, and errors of reference, Tallgren presented a solid analysis of the East Russian Bronze Age and its chronology. This work finally put to rest the idea that the East Russian Bronze Age was an offshoot of the Siberian Bronze Age, representing the assumed westward migration of the Finno-Ugrian peoples from an Asian homeland. Tallgren’s work in Russia also led to a series of works published between 1917 and 1920 that systematized existing collections of East Russian and Siberian antiquities and outlined the Bronze Age Ananyino culture.

In 1920 Tallgren accepted the newly founded chair of archaeology at the University of Tartu (Dorpat) in Estonia. His work in Estonia included the organization of archaeological research on a nationwide basis. Among the many results of Tallgren’s professorship in Tartu was the two-volume Zur Archäologie Eestis I–II (1922–1925), the first general presentation of the prehistory of Estonia. Although Tallgren enjoyed a unique status in Estonia, he returned to Finland in 1923 to assume the chair of archaeology at the University of Helsinki, serving as a professor until his death in 1945.

Tallgren’s efforts in the late 1920s and 1930s were largely focused on the Eurasia journal, which he developed as a forum for archaeologists and other scholars from western, central, and eastern Europe alike at a time of mounting ideological and political divisions. It presented materials, results of research and scholarship, and works in progress, as well as items of debate. But it also reflected the liberal views of its editor, calling for free inquiry and the exchange of opinion. Tallgren criticized both Soviet Russian and Nazi German archaeologists for their doctrinaire and ideologically oriented scholarship. In addition to editing the journal, he also published regular and extensive contributions to it, most notably La Pontide préscythique aprés l’introduction des metaux (Prescythian Pontus before the introduction of metals; 248 pp., Eurasia 2, 1926). His essay Sur la méthode de l’archéologie prehistorique (On the method of prehistoric archaeology), published in volume 10 of Eurasia in 1936 and in an English translation in antiquity in 1937, came to be quoted in the 1970s by proponents of the “New Archaeology,” who saw it as a fundamental statement of the purpose of archaeological inquiry (see Binford 1972, 79). Tallgren’s many publications of the 1930s included Suomen Muinaisuus (1931), a general work on the prehistory of Finland.

aarne michaël tallgren was not a field archaeologist, nor was he a meticulous student of detail or a theoretician. He was primarily interested in the terms of cultural history and synthesis, and he displayed a phenomenally broad grasp of the spatial and chronological entities of the archaeological record (an accomplishment that was still possible before World War II when individual specialists could lay claim to whole areas of learning). Tallgren was also extremely productive. His bibliography contains over 700 items published between 1902 and 1944. The years of feverish activity, however, ultimately undermined his health and sapped his energies, leading to his death in Helsinki in 1945 at the age of sixty.

Jyri Kokkonen