and 148 reports of archaeological excavations, together with lists of 28,500 artifacts, were registered during the first fifteen years of the activities of the board.

Latvian University (founded 1919)—The only educational institution with archaeology as an academic discipline in the independent republic of Latvia. The Chair of Archaeology was founded by the Faculty of Philology and Philosophy in 1922. Professor Max Ebert (1879– 1929) came to Rīga from the Albertus University of Koenigsberg. During the short term of his work at the university, archaeology became an academic discipline. The first three students, Voldemārs Ģinters, F. Jākabsons (1896–1930), and Eduards Šturms, continued their studies at the Albertus University of Koenigsberg. Max Ebert was displaced by professor Francis Balodis, the only academically educated Latvian archaeologist, who worked in Moscow and Saratow Universities and at the Institutes of Archaeology from 1912 to 1924. The first generation of Latvian archaeologists were trained during the 1920s. Elvīra Šnore, Rauls Šnore, Ādolfs Karnups, and Pēteris Stepiņš were the top students of professor Francis Balodis. In the first year of Soviet occupation, 1940, Balodis emigrated to Sweden. Šturms, now associate professor, continued to manage archaeological courses during the Soviet and German Nazi occupations. In 1944 Šturms emigrated to Germany. The first educational works at the university in the postwar period were organised by Rauls Šnore, but he was the subject of political repression. The Chair of Archaeology disappeared for a long time. Between 1950 and 1980 there were a few courses in protohistory from Professor Ēvalds Mugurēvičs, the foremost specialist in late Middle Ages archaeology in Latvia. In present-day Latvia there are only two archaeologists on the staff of the Department of Archaeology—Professor Andrejs Vasks, who specializes in the Bronze Age, and Associate Professor Armands Vijups, who specializes in the theory of archaeology. Only six people have completed master’s theses.

Institute of History of Latvia—The scientific center of investigation of the prehistory and history of Latvia was founded in 1936. A Department of Archaeology was organized in the Institute of History and Material Culture of the Academy of Science after World War II (in 1947). In the new political situation some archaeologists began to investigate an urgent theme—the contacts between the people of the Iron Age of East Latvia and the Slavs during the tenth through the thirteenth centuries. The Chair of Archaeology at the university was not restored. Marxist methodology was used. Using Marxist methodology, Estonian academician Harri Moora (1952) published a special survey of the prehistory and early Middle Ages of Latvia. Excavations concentrated in the east and middle parts of Latvia. The Letgallian early medieval cemetery Pildas Nukši, which contained more than 250 graves, was investigated and the survey published in 1954. The Lettgallian hillfort Asote of the tenth through the twelfth centuries was excavated in 1949 through 1954 by Šnore, and the Semigallian hillfort Tērvete of the tenth through the twelfth centuries was investigated in 1951 through 1960. A unique clay tile painting of a piper was found inside a dwelling on the palisade of the Tērvete hillfort. Latvian archaeologists of the second generation—Emīlija Brīvkalne, Jolanta Daiga, Jānis Graudonis, Ēvalds Mugurēvičs, Ādolfs Stubavs, and Anna Zariņa—continued the excavation. The first published monograph, “Asote Hillfort” (Šnore) appeared in 1961; the second, about the contacts between the Lettgallians and the Slavs in the tenth through the thirteenth centuries, in 1965 (Mugurēvičs). Two other monographs were devoted to Lettgallian clothes (Zariņa) and to Late Bronze and Early Iron Age (Graudonis). The first excavations of the Stone Age monuments on the bank of Lake Lielais Ludzas were carried out at the end of the 1950s by Rauls Šnore and Francis Zagorskis. The second region of investigation was the Lake Lubāna Wetland in the 1960s. Discovery of twenty-five new settlements with well-preserved organic materials in the Lake Lubāna Wetland allowed the organization of large-scale protection excavations in the zones of building and melioration (Loze). Excavations were carried out by Zagorskis and Ilze Loze. Fieldwork was stimulated during the investigation of three building and flooded zones of