artifacts. Surveys of Old Town Rīga (1998) and the castles of the Archbishop of Rīga during the Livonian period and later (1999) were detailed and included architectural studies across the territories of present-day Latvia. Publication of the compiled works of the talented Latvian archaeologist Fēliks Jākobsons (1896–1930) is the best example of the strong interest in Latvian cultural heritage (1999). A connoisseur of Eastern Prussian archaeological materials, Jākobsons, who graduated from the Albertus University in Koenigsberg, described and illustrated the archaeological material lost during World War II in Eastern Prussia (now the Kaliningrad district of Russia).

The organization of international conferences in Latvia—especially for discussing themes concerning the Baltic Sea during the Stone and Bronze Ages (1995) and in the Middle Ages (1992)—helped to make contacts between archaeologists from opposite sides of the Baltic. Such important changes mark new approaches in the development of the archaeology of Latvia. New projects, such as the excavation of a Neolithic ritual place of the inhabitants of Litorina littoral of 5000 b.c. and a study of the influence of Stone Age people on the environment in the Lake Lubāna Wetland, began. Another prospective project is in the area of the Dubna River system (a tributary of the Daugava), which includes the excavation of the hillfort Jersika, inhabited during the Iron Age and early Middle Ages. Two stone and brick castles of the Livonian period—Turaida and Cēsis (1974–1999)have been excavated. The archaeological excavations in Old Town Rīga continue. Special attention is being paid to the “Black-heads building”—the only secular building that has survived since the fourteenth century. A special work about the “Black-heads building” project is scheduled for publication.

Personalities

Archaeologist Jānis Apals (1930– ) received his doctorate in history from the State University in Rīga. He is a senior researcher in the Department of Archaeology at the Institute of History of Latvia and pioneered investigations of underwater Viking age monuments in the lakes of Latvia, where remains of ten underwater fortresses were discovered. He was an organizer of the excavations at Lake Āraiši—the primary extensively excavated and reconstructed monument of the Viking age in the Baltic states.

Professor Dr. Francis Balodis (1882–1947) was the first academically educated Latvian archaeologist and the founder of the Latvian National School of Archaeology. Balodis studied in Dorpat (Tartu), Moscow, and Munich Universities and is a specialist in the archaeology of the Iron and Middle Ages, Egyptology, and the History of Art. Balodis was a professor at the universities of Moscow and Saratov (Russia) from 1918 to 1924, the chair of Archaeology and the dean of the faculty of Philosophy and Philology in Rīga (1924), the pro-rector of the State University in Rīga (1931–1933), head of the Monument Protection Board (1932–1940), and the editor of the periodical Senatne un Māksla (Antiquity and Art) from 1936 to 1940. Balodis excavated the Middle Age hillfort Jersika (Gersike) and the Raunas Tanisa hillfort. Beginning in 1940, he worked in Sweden as an Egyptologist.

Ernests Brastiņš (1892–1941) studied at the Art School in Saint Petersburg. During World War I he worked in the Russian Army as a topographer. Brastiņš was a pioneer in the field of, and the author of a topographic survey of, Latvian hillforts with the remains of wooden constructions, surveying in total 282 sites between 1922 and 1927. He was the director of the Museum of War in Rīga, where a Department of Latvian Hillforts was organized. He was arrested and deported by Soviet political bodies to Astrakhan (Lower Volga), where he was sentenced to death in 1941.

Voldemārs Ģinters (1899–1979), a Ph.D., studied at the state universities in Rīga and Koenigsberg. Ģinters was the director of the State Museum of History in Rīga from 1934 to 1945. He specialized in the archaeology of the Middle Ages and was one of the best methodologists of excavations. Ģinters organized investigations at hillforts in Daugmale and Mežotne (1938– 1939; 1942). At the end of World War II Ģinters emigrated to Sweden, where he became a researcher at the State Museum of History in Stockholm.