countries: field archaeology, chronology, culture-history, and settlement archaeology.

From the beginning field archaeology was one of the great achievements of prehistoric archaeology in Germany. In this context heinrich schliemann (1822–1890) was legendary. Although he was certainly not a good excavator in a modern sense, he nonetheless indirectly contributed greatly to the development of field archaeology. His successors, such as Carl Schuchhardt (1859–1943), undertook outstanding fieldwork in the early twentieth century in northern and eastern Germany. Schuchhardt was followed by scholars such as Gerhard Bersu and Werner Buttler. New fieldwork methods were developed in northern Germany before and after World War II in the course of investigating large wetland settlements along the coast, including the sites of Haithabu and Feddersen Wierde (see p. 584). Another specialized tradition within archaeological fieldwork, which connected prehistoric archaeology with other disciplines such as geology, botany, and zoology, was the outcome of the investigations of lake-dwelling sites in Switzerland and southern Germany. Pioneering work was undertaken in this area in the 1920s and more recently since 1970.

The second constant concern of German prehistory has been chronology. Although the Danish archaeologist c. j. thomsen has to be acknowledged as the founder of the three-age system, German scholars were expressing similar ideas very early on. This is especially true of Johann Friedrich Danneil (1783–1868), a teacher in Salzwedel, Altmark, and Friedrich Lisch (1801–1883), the director of the antiquities collection of the grand duke of Mecklenburg. Although the three-age system was rejected by the German scholars Ludwig Lindenschmit (1809–1893) and Christian Hostmann (1829–1889), by the end of the nineteenth century Otto Tischler (1843–1891) at Königsberg (East Prussia) and Paul Reinecke (1872–1958) at Mainz were successful in developing a periodization of the Bronze and Iron Ages of central Europe; the fundamentals of this periodization are still used today. The comparative chronology of the European Neolithic developed by Vladimir Milojcic (1918–1978), professor at Heidelberg in the 1940s, was equally influential. His system provided common ground for scholars working on the European Neolithic until the “radiocarbon revolution” of the 1960s. Unfortunately, Milojcic himself refused to accept this dating innovation, and because his influence persisted even after his death, innovations within German archaeology were hindered for some time.

The third aspect characterizing German prehistory, especially during the first half of the twentieth century, was the attempt to identify ancient peoples from their material remains. The concept of “archaeological cultures” became central and can be traced back to Gustav Kossinna (1858–1931) and his settlement-archaeological method. This method gave rise to broad discussions, which continue today. Major early contributions to these discussions came from Karl-Hermann Jacob-Friesen (1886– 1960), Ernst Wahle (1889–1981), and Hans-Jürgen Eggers (1906–1975). They were especially concerned with questions of source criticism with developing attempts to establish the quality of the data being used by archaeologists.

An approach that differed somewhat from that of Kossinna and his followers was represented in the writings of Oswald Menghin (1888–1973), a professor at Vienna. Adopting ideas from the Kulturkreislehre, a paradigm developed by German ethnologists Wilhelm Schmidt and fritz graebner at the beginning of the twentieth century, Menghin, in the 1930s, postulated a number of primary cultures and tried to detect their later interaction from archaeological evidence. His final aim was an integration of archaeological and ethnological knowledge into a universal history of early mankind. This approach ended with the rejection of Kulturkreislehre within ethnology in the 1950s.

The fourth important concern is closely related to the first. The execution of well-organized excavations of large settlements, combined with scientific analyses of the materials uncovered, enabled German scholars to investigate not just settlements but whole settlement systems. From this basis Herbert Jankuhn developed a broad settlement-archaeological method (not to be confused with Kossinna’s method, also known by that name) with the aim of clarifying the settlement history of selected areas. This approach has been improved by a number of projects since 1970 such as the Aldenhovener Platte, where the settlement system of the early Neolithic period could be reconstructed.