was widespread in Scandinavia, examples being the work of O.A. Digre, who examined many development sites in Trondheim, Norway, and P. Fardelin, who did the same on the island of Gotland, Sweden. Research excavations by H. Jankuhn began at Hedeby, in southern Denmark, in the 1930s and was continued after World War II.

A range of specialities developed during this period. These are most obvious in early medieval archaeology, where subdivisions based on regional and chronological units, often linked to ethnic groups, were established. These still continue to this day, and since World War II have been supported by specialist societies or conferences, which may also incorporate multidisciplinary work by literary, toponymic, historical, and art history scholars.

Post–World War II Expansion

The massive urban destruction in many parts of Europe during World War II resulted in an unrivaled opportunity to examine urban evidence for medieval towns, though the possibility was not always seized with great enthusiasm. Great progress was made in northern Europe and to a certain extent in Britain, but in other countries, such as France, rebuilding took place without excavation. It was in this period that the full potential of urban archaeology began to be realized, although often the organizational structure and methods of funding were adequate in only a few regions. Elsewhere much evidence was lost, but at least the loss was noted, and in subsequent decades better facilities could be established for urban excavation.

In eastern Europe, state archaeological services were founded that accepted the importance of medieval archaeology. Each country established an academy of sciences, and within such a framework research programs were established and linked to nationalist and political themes. These included examination of the great Moravian state in Czechoslovakia and the Old Russ in Russia. In Poland, a center for the study of the Polish state was established in 1948, and about a third of all excavations in that country up to the mid-1960s were on medieval sites. The massive destruction of Warsaw and many trading cities on the Baltic coast gave opportunities for excavation before reconstruction or redevelopment.

In Britain, a pressure group called Rescue lobbied for excavation on many threatened medieval sites, and the importance of urban archaeology was highlighted by Carolyn Heighway. Excavations of the city of Winchester by Martin Biddle of the University of Pennsylvania were influential in Britain and some areas of Europe for indicating the potential for large open-area excavation in towns and for the examination within one town of various elements that, together, allowed for overall urban development to be understood within a historic framework. Methodological developments such as the design of recording forms and the elaboration of the Harris matrix for the elucidation and display of stratigraphic sequences also had widespread repercussions for medieval archaeology and beyond.

In France, the University of Caen has been the leading academic center for medieval archaeology, particularly through its Medieval Research Center, established in 1951 by Michel de Bouard. It has stimulated a number of initiatives, including biennial Chateau Gaillard conferences on castles, studies of pottery production, and urban archaeology. It was through the center that the journal Archéologie Medievale was first published in 1971.

Castle excavations have continued, and in Germany information concerning significant assemblages of pottery and other finds began to be published in the 1960s; previously only architectural details and sequences of structures had received much attention. In England, the origin of earthen castles was the focus of a concerted research campaign in the 1960s, and a similar study was undertaken in Northern Ireland. Castles of native princes have more recently been subjected to excavation in Wales to complement the already extensive studies of those built by the English. The changing interests and priorities of castle archaeology can be appreciated on a European level through Château Gaillard, the proceedings of the conference held every two years since the 1960s.

It was not until the beginning of the 1950s that rural medieval archaeology developed in