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perspective, that is, when different approaches are used for a reciprocal control.

This limitation on the role of monuments is echoed in Adolf Heinrich Borbein’s recent request for a model of interpretation that comprises the artistic form as an upholder of significance, those external circumstances by which the latter is influenced, different kinds of contemporary artistic expressions, political, social, and cultural phenomena, and the question of the relation of each of these factors to the other and for their mutuality in substance. In this view, visual art provides the concrete idea of the “spirit of time” or of its contemporary and intellectual tendencies, even more so than historical facts. By extension, artistic farsightedness may influence or anticipate future developments in other social fields.

This concept, which integrates historical context and aims to describe the historical position of monuments, allows new access to the comprehension of Roman art, an area to which German archaeology has recently been devoted. Tonio Holscher’s 1960 treatise Roman Picture Language as a Semantic System must be understood in this way. Proceeding on the assumption of a pluralism of styles in Roman art, formulated earlier, Holscher demanded that monuments must begin to be observed within an overall cultural-historical context, before a single aspect of Roman visual art and its significance can be commented on. Furthermore, he propounded the substantial thesis that in Roman art for different allied subjects and different patterns from different epochs of Greek art were selected. These established patterns were reused throughout Roman art, unaffected by contemporary stylistic tendencies. On the basis of examples he succeeded in demonstrating that the choice of Greek stylistic forms followed a system, or semanticization of styles. Holscher argued that by Augustan times there was an established canon of representational modes and picture types, that is, a more or less constant picture language, and this semantic system did not undergo serious changes during the first and second centuries a.d. With regard to the relation of picture language and style, he made clear that style “as an expression of general taste and habit” represents a variable factor, in contrast to the more likely static character of the picture language. This picture language submitted to the semantic system does not exclude stylistic changes, that is, different modes and types of representation. In the historical dimension of his examinations Holscher showed that a systematic, static picture language was advantageous for the conveyance of messages and general communication in the Roman Empire. He also pointed out that the tendency to set up norms, observed in a section of art, was generally characteristic of Roman imperial culture. Holscher’s theoretical analyses of Roman art characterized the position of German classical archaeology today: to practice archaeology as both a science of art and a historical discipline.

E. Thomas

German Prehistoric Archaeology

Germany, like other European nation states, has a long tradition of prehistoric research, but prehistoric archaeology was first taught in the universities