Towards a Social History of Archaeology: The Case of the Excavators of Early Iron Age Burial Mounds in Southern Germany

While the general history of archaeology has received agrowing interest lately1, these efforts still lack a common research-guiding agenda.Furthermore, most of the studies still concentrate on biographies and event history. Theembedding of archaeology in the structures and conditions of its time is still a kind ofterra incognita. The few well known publications (e. g. Hudson 1981; Kristiansen 1981;Patterson 1986; 1995) emphasize the gap only more. The lack of asignificant amount of literature especially on the social history of archaeology is allthe more surprising as the early interest in archaeology shows a clear social bias:archaeology was (and still is?) a recreational activity for the educated and thewell-off. While Hudson’s book in particular is very readable, it is clearly meant toprovide only a very broad picture. Along with the other publications mentioned above itis now somewhat dated; the lack of recent works on this topic thus highlight the lack ofinterest in the social history of archaeology even more.2 However, this essay does notdeal with this deplorable fact, but seeks to present some ‘hard’ data on only one,albeit important activity of early archaeological excavations, particularly those ofburial mounds. Its focus is on Southern Germany and on graves from the early IronAge.