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Gabrovec, Stane (1920–)

Stane Gabrovec is a Slovenian archaeologist and a specialist in the Bronze and Iron Ages of central and southwestern Europe. He graduated in archaeology and classical philology from Ljubljana University in 1948, specialized in prehistoric archaeology at the University of Tübingen in Germany, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Zadar in Croatia. He was curator of prehistory at the National Museum in Ljubljana after World War II (1948) and after 1956, head of the Prehistory Department at the same institution. From 1969 to 1989, he taught prehistory at the University of Ljubljana. Gabrovec became a member of the Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences and a correspondent member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich.

Gabrovec has dedicated most of his scientific work to solving problems of chronology and cultural definition in the Bronze and Iron Age cultures of the southeastern Alps and Caput Adriae, the area comprising slovenia, austria, northeastern italy, western Hungary, and northern Croatia. His most important and highly influential work on Slovenian prehistoric archaeology and beyond, i.e., on the establishment of the chronology for the late–Bronze and early–Iron Ages in Slovenia, was published in Halstatska kultura v Sloveniji [Hallstatt Culture in Slovenia], Arheoloski vestnik (Ljubljana) 15–16 [1964– 1965]: 21–63. In those studies, he defined five regional groups within the Slovenian Hallstatt culture: the Dolenjska (lower Carniola) group in central Slovenia, the Sveta Lucija (St. Lucia) group in western Slovenia, the Notranjska (inner Carniola) group in southwestern Slovenia, the Gorenjska (upper Carniola) group in northwestern Slovenia, and the Stajerska (Styria) group in northeastem Slovenia and southeastem Austria. Gabrovec incorporated these groups into the cultural and chronological schemes of southeastern and central Europe, and he also demonstrated that the process of transition from the late Bronze Age to the early Iron Age is characterized to a great extent by cultural and ethnic continuity from the “Urnfield culture” and by the presence of the early Iron Age elements originating from the Balkans. He demonstrated a similar phenomena of ethnic and cultural continuity in the la tène period in Slovenia, when several cultural groups continued their development from the early Iron Age while celts populated only parts of central and eastern Slovenia in the middle La Tène period.

Gabrovec also published an extensive and updated synthesis of the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age in Slovenia. Among the numerous sites excavated by Gabrovec, the most important is the famous princely hill fort at stična. This large barrow was excavated between 1960 and 1964, and part of the settlement was excavated between 1967 and 1974. Besides studies of the Bronze and Iron Ages, his work includes the history of Slovenian archaeology, prehistoric topography, and prehistoric art.

Methodologically, Gabrovec’s approach can be described as part of the so-called Gero von Merhart historical school, developed in the 1940s and 1950s at the University of Marburg in Germany. This approach is based on a detailed analysis of material culture, its chronological sequence and development, and its geographical distribution, and such analysis is applied to the definition of the different cultural regions, the