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A study of precious metal finds in Northern Europe-mainly northern Germany and Poland, though there is also material from Czechoslavakia and Austria. Roggenbruck analyses distribution, dating, the proportion of gold and silver, and the find contexts. There is a catalogue of the finds, but no illustrations whatsoever. German text. ... Read more

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The bronze bull from Weltenburg and the owls on wheel linchpins from Manching are among the best known animal depictions among Bavaria's rich assemblage of Bronze and Iron Age metalwork. In addition to the aesthetic beauty of such pieces, they are particularly useful for identifying the ideologies and beliefs of the people who made them. Wagner's examines the historical context, production techniques and symbolism of these Bavarian objects, using comparisons with contemporary fauna for reference. Wagner also considers emotional and practical relationships between humans and animals and how repesentations of these relationships in objects and art identify cultures. Concludes with an illustrated catalofue of over 200 items. ... Read more

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In the late nineteenth century, Germans spearheaded a worldwide effort to preserve the material traces of humanity, designing major ethnographic museums and building extensive networks of communication and exchange across the globe. In this groundbreaking study, Glenn Penny explores the appeal of ethnology in Imperial Germany and analyzes the motivations of the scientists who created the ethnographic museums.

Penny shows that German ethnologists were not driven by imperialist desires or an interest in legitimating putative biological or racial hierarchies. Overwhelmingly antiracist, they aspired to generate theories about the essential nature of human beings through their museums' collections. They gained support in their efforts from boosters who were enticed by participating in this international science and who used it to promote the cosmopolitan character of their cities and themselves. But these cosmopolitan ideals were eventually overshadowed by the scientists' more modern, professional, and materialist concerns, which dramatically altered the science and its goals.

By clarifying German ethnologists' aspirations and focusing on the market and conflicting interest groups, Penny makes important contributions to German history, the history of science, and museum studies. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

History of the Development of German Ethnographic Museums
This book, based on the author's doctoral thesis, is an excellent exploration of the development of ethnographic museums in Germany. These museums originally evolved from scattered ethnographic collections.They were developed and funded as a result ofcompetition between different municipal governments. Originally the stated purpose of such institutions was to understand man kind by collecting exhaustive examples of material culture from "disappearing" societies with a view to understanding them through evaluating these materials.Later there was more of a focus on the public nature of museums and how certain types of displays could make human variation more accessible to the public. One major change was from typological arrangements to geographically oriented arrangements.Display caseswent from being packed with examples of spears from a variety of cultures to thoughtful arrangements of objects from a single culture. He discusses problems such as lack of space, need for more labels and the focus on accumulating more and more objects at the expense of cataloging or evaluating them. He gives numerous interesting examples of political strife and also how collecting was carried out in the field in the colonial context including a descriptions of some less than ethical collectors. Overall, for someone who is interested in this topic, this is an excellent book which held my interest throughout. ... Read more

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(BAR S219, 1984) ... Read more

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(BAR -S432, 1988) ... Read more

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This book offers a new approach to the problem of Slavic ethnicity in southeastern Europe between c. 500 and c. 700. The author shows how Byzantine authors "invented" the Slavs, in order to make sense of political and military developments taking place in the Balkans. Making extensive use of archaeology to show that such developments resulted in the rise of powerful leaders, responsible for creating group identities and mobilizing warriors for successful raids across the frontier. The author rejects the idea of Slavic migration, and shows that "the Slavs" were the product of the frontier. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Independent studies in correlation
Since both reviewers before me made a detailed review, I would like to interpret the content of this scientificaly very well supported scholar work in a larger context. First of all, I would like to inform/remind future readers that the concept of "Slavic migrations" is a residue of the 19-th century scholarship whose conclusions were "firmly based" on the scarcity of the archaeological material and the "prima facie" interpretation of the mediveal Byzantine texts. Curta uses: much more material artefacts, his common sense and analytical approach to the written material. Consequently, it is no surprise that he comes to the conclusion that there was no "arrival of the Slavs" and there were no "massive Slavic migrations" on the Balkans in the early middle ages. The reader will find it difficult to draw a different conclusion on the basis of the presented evidence in the book.

However, the conclusions of Dr. Curta concerning the Slavic ethnogenesis are supported by at least two more independent streams of scholar work.

The first one comes in a form of recent breakthroughs in the field of genetics. The analyses of genetic founder linages on the populations in the Balkans (and eastern Europe) showed that only 10% of the extant mt DNA genetic pool (maternal ancestry)is of recent date (recent = starting from Metal ages onwards). The rest (90%)of the lineages are from Paleo-Mezo-Neolithic migrations that ceased some 5000 -6000 years before present. Similar results were found for the Y-chromosome lineages (paternal ancestry).

The second stream of scholar work that discards the idea of massive Slavic migrations in the early middle ages is the Theory of continuity of professor Mario Alinei. This theory (which is strongly corroborated by the above mentioned genetic findings)claims that the populations and languages in Europe are more or less geographically autohtonous. On several places in his two volume study ( Il Mulino editions 1996 & 2000) he points out that the idea of recent Slavic migrations is inconsistent and unsupported either by archaeological or linguistic evidence.
(I hope that this extremly important and up to date study will be published in English soon).

Those strong correlations between Curta's and Alinei's evidence and conclusions, on the one side, and the genetic evidence on the other, make a really strong case against the concept of Slavic migrations and offers a much more supported model of the prehistory and history of Balkans.

Seen in this larger context, the content of Dr. Curta's book represents a basic component of the new paradigm that emerges in the scholar work.

We cordially hope that time has come to make significant changes in the elementary school and high school history textbooks which are still based on the interpretations of the 19-th century scholar work.

Bravo!
This is a superb work of scholarship, putting to shame most histories of the Balkans which deal with this time period (e.g., Fine's). Curta smashes modern notions of the Slavic migrations derived mostly through (Byzantine) Roman sources, most of which are purely second hand accounts.

Curta begins with a history of the current thought on the Slavic migrations, influenced primarily by 19th century prejudices and Soviet Union "scholarship" emphasising the reigning hegemony there. He then goes on to offer a critical reading of texts, first those contemporaneous to the period under review, then the centuries immediately following. What's so important is that these readings are truly critical, as opposed to accepting or dismisive: how do these people know what they are writing? All of these texts have value, the argument goes, but they all have different value. What do these texts tell us about their authors?

Curta then reviews the archaeological evidence for the Byzantine-Roman fortifications built along the Danube. He finds Procopius' reports of these forts to be very accurate, but notes a significant absense of evidence that many were destroyed by violence; most were abandonded (and wait until you read his arguments about the coin hordes, a nerd's delight!).

Then Curta reveals the evidence for an actual Slavic culture north of the Danube. What he finds, using distributions of sites and artifacts, correspondence analyses, and cluster analyses, is a complex, well-organized and far-ranging system for the distribution of goods. His tentative conclusion is that this notion of Slav is one, while perhaps taken from a tribe somewhere along the northern border, that is projected onto a heterogeneous group of individuals that have long-ranging relationships from just east of Bavaria to east of Crimea to the Baltic seas! In short, there was no migration as such, they were always there, but had not yet formed this group identity they were given. (He does not deny raids into Byzantine-Roman territory, but who didn't raid their territory?)

What I didn't like: Curta has quite a beef with linguists and tars the entire field in his introduction. Linguists, he claims, have used spurious analyses of the Slavic lexicon to invent a purely fictional Slavic Urheimat (roughly, homeland/place of origin). While this might be true, this sort of folk etymology has little place in modern linguistics. Worse, Curta implies that he doesn't believe that Slavic languages are part of the Indo-European family! Anyone who knows a little of a Slavic language will recognize this as fantasy... Curta doesn't bother to justify his claim. It's hard to know how he would answer for this, particularly given that he doesn't seem especially up to date in linguistics.

But that's not the thrust of the book. The evidence is placed in the archaeology and a truly critical reading of the contemporaneous texts. This is a well substantiated iconoclasm that should be read by every student of European history.

Curta, The Making of the Slavs
The main purpose of this volume is "to explore the nature and construction of the Slavic ethnic identity in the light of the current anthropological research on ethnicity". The author proposes an innovative vision about the archaeological evidence, considering that the ethnic boundaries were marked by items of material culture (features of an "emblemic style" used by an ethnic group in order to be different). The `ethnie' results from the interaction of groups with different emblemic styles. Significant changes in the material culture can thus show what Curta calls "the making of the Slavs": the emergence of a new ethnie. This approach is completely new from all what was written before about the Slavic ethnogenesis.
The sources about the early Slavs are classified in three categories according to the position of their authors: eyewitness, possible contact and second-hand information. The interest of the Byzantine writers was focused on the Slavs only in some periods when they were a real danger. The sources are showing that the inroads occurred when the Danubian limes was weak because the Byzantine army was involved in other wars. A major change took place in the Slavic society around 550-560: the anarchy recorded by Procopius was replaced by war operations commanded by several chiefs whose names were preserved in the further sources. The Byzantine answer to the Slavic threat was the building of three defence lines inside the eastern Balkan provinces. The migration of the Slavs south of the Danube can be dated only since the first years of Heraclius. Only after their settlement, the Byzantine sources recorded several real tribal names, replacing the Byzantine ethnic label that was the generic name Sclavenoi.
Curta examines the Byzantine Balkan region, in order to explain how the classical urbanized society turned into a ruralized one in the period of the Slavic invasions. After a detailed archaeological overview of the main cities in the Balkan provinces, the author concludes that the economic decline occurred because they were not supplied with food from the hinterland. The fortified network established by Justinian fell because the state was not able to support the permanent garrisons of the limes with the central distribution of grain; in the same time, the few number of peasants made impossible a defence based on their service. The withdraw of the Balkan troops in the early years of Heraclius was the natural result of the interruption of the annona taken from Egypt. Therefore, the economic decline and the withdraw of the army from the Danube were not caused by the Slavic invasions; both had internal reasons, remarkably emphasized by Curta.
Objects like amber beads, bow fibulae or pots with stamped decoration are items of two well-defined `emblemic styles' developed by the Gepids and the Lombards. The ethnic identity was constructed on the basis of different types of imported objects with symbolic value bore by elite people (especially by women). The spreading of these objects in different areas matches with the territories inhabited by the Gepids and the Lombards. Aristocratic women, with their garnment, played the main role in the establishment and the transmission of the emblemic style and, as a consequence, of the ethnic identity (they were "symbolic vehicles for the construction of social identities"). The need to emphasize the emblemic style increased in periods of instability and competition between neighboring groups. In this way, Curta finally comes to the making of the early Slavic emblemic style. Like the Gepids or Lombards, the Slavs used specific types of pottery and bow fibulae to construct an emblemic style. This does not means that such objects were genuine Slavic products. Curta argues that the earliest specimens of the so-called "bow fibulae" were found in Mazuria and in Crimea. Their diffusion does not show migrations, but another kind of mobility: "gifts or women married to distant groups in forging alliances" and their function was to express a kind of heraldry displayed on the female dressing. The bow fibulae became a part of the Slavic emblemic style shortly before 600, in the same time with a wider change in the material culture which took place during the climax of the raiding activity of the Slavic rulers.
The individual houses were settled according to a pattern that implied specialized sectors for production or for ceremonies involving food consumption. Food was prepared in ceramic pots, whose shape was determined only by practical reasons. Curta points that the pottery shapes "should be interpreted in relation to food preparation, not to emblemic style". Hundreds of hand-made and wheel-made ceramic vessels belong to the same set of shapes. The pots from the sites ascribed to the Slavs have similar shapes with pieces from Gepidic cemeteries and from Danubian early Byzantine fortresses. If so, the `Prague type', which was defined as the genuine Slavic pottery, is an artificial construct of the archaeologists.
The Lower Danubian settlements are earlier than those from the Zhitomir area (the chronology was established with the aid of the metallic objects, including coins). This contradicts the usual theory of the Slavic migration. In this way, Curta comes to one of his main conclusions: "it appears that instead of a `Slavic culture' originating in a homeland and then spreading to surrounding areas, we should envisage a much broader area of common economic and cultural traditions". This means that large migrations should be replaced with short-distance movements caused by the itinerant agriculture. The population from this wide area became Slavic because acquired an identity during the second half of the 6th century. This identity was expressed through a specific emblemic style defined by bow-fibulae and pottery decorated with finger impressions.
The final chapter deals with the political organization of the early Slavs. Curta applies the anthropological theories on chiefdom, distinguishing between great-men (warriors), big-men (rich men with authority inside their community), and chiefs (rulers of organized polities with control over a group of subjects). The Slavs evolved during the 6th century from a "segmentary society" (lack of hierarchy) to a society ruled by chiefs who fought between them. The emergence of the political organization was the result of the contacts with the Byzantine state. By this military elite the Slavs came into being as a new ethnicity.
The book written by Florin Curta will be a turning point both for the Byzantine and the Slavic studies. ... Read more

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The Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel, the Karlsaue in the Fulda valley and the Wilhelmsthal Park are among the most excellent examples of European park and landscape architecture. This volume traces the history of these parks and presents them in spectacular color photographs. German text. Die Kasseler Wilhelmshöhe, die Karlsaue im Fuldatal sowie Park Wilhelmsthal gehören zu den Höhepunkten der europäischen Gartenkunst. Der Band zeichnet die Gartengeschichte der Residenzstadt von den Anfängen bis heute nach und dokumentiert diese in prächtigen Fotografien ein Höhepunkt im Dokumenta-Jahr 2007. ... Read more

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A `study of cultural adaptation in late glacial - early post-glacial southwestern Germany' with detailed interpretation of data such as the lithic artefacts, topographical situation of settlements, settlement dynamics, subsistence economy, and mobility and communication, over the naturally defined area of the Swabian Alb: an area with good archaeological source material and a long history of archaeological inquiry and research. ... Read more

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Germania inferior, province between the civilizations: too Roman for the Germanic inhabitants, too Germanic for the Romans. Who did actually inhabit the province? To what social conditions did the regional environment give rise? What economic exchange was there between town and country, between the native inhabitants, the Romans and the free Germanic peoples? Archaeologists and historians now have more sophisticated tools and can provide new, more precise answers to these questions. The North of the province in particular has been explored more thoroughly, and the results of that research form the basis of this volume. The papers resulted from a colloquium with German and Dutch archaeologists and historians. They draw up an account of the current state of the art and show the perspectives for future research. ... Read more

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English summary: Newly developed technologies, practices and fields of study in the context of salvage excavations have necessitated this volume, which assesses the progress of medieval archaeology in France during the past 30 years. French text.French description: De nouvelles technologies, de nouvelles pratiques, de nouveaux domaines d'etudes dans un contexte ou les fouilles preventives n'ont cesse de se developper rendaient necessaire ce bilan afin d'envisager l'avenir de l'archeologie medievale. Au cours des trente dernieres annees, les progres de la ceramologie, de la paleobotanique, de la carpologie, de l'archeozoologie, de l'analyse de vestiges osseux - pour ne prendre que quelques exemples - ont en effet renouvele la connaissance des habitats, urbains et ruraux, fortifies ou non, aussi bien en termes de modes de vie que de materiaux de construction, mais aussi celle des edifices religieux, des sepultures les centres d'interet des archeologues se sont etendus a tous les secteurs de la vie medievale, ce que cet ouvrage illustre a l'aide d'exemples pris dans differentes regions francaises. ... Read more

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A detailed study of the important silver hoard from Hildesheim, Germany. ... Read more

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Posluschny's thesis on the nature of Hallstatt settlements in Germany moves the focus away from high-status forts and burial sites to look at evidence for settlements in a triangular region between Karlstadt, Wurzburg, Kitzingen and Schweinfurt in southern Germany. The emphasis of the largely theoretical study is on the analysis of findspots revealed by GIS survey, almost 750 of which are catalogued in the second half of the book and on an included CD-Rom. Types of finds are illustrated. German text, English summary. ... Read more

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Based on the author's thesis, this volume contains a catalogue of metal parts belonging to ploughing implements from the Roman provinces of Gallia and Germania Superior. The two-page introduction is followed by the catalogue of 119 objects, divided into three classes of implement type: socketed shares; tanged shares; coulters. The research which led to this catalogue is outlined in the author's publication Recherches sur les instruments aratoires et le treavail du sol en Gaule Belgique (BAR S1235, 2004). French text; short French, English and German abstracts. ... Read more

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Archaeologist? Mythmaker? Crook? This engaging, illustrated biography of Heinrich Schliemann — a nineteenth-century romantic who most believe did find the ancient city of Troy —reveals him to be a fascinating mixture of all three.

From the time Heinrich Schliemann was a boy — or so he said — he
knew he was destined to dig for lost cities and find buried treasure. And if Schliemann had his way, history books would honor him to this day as one of the greatest archaeologists who ever lived. But a little digging into the life of Schliemann himself reveals that this nineteenth-century self-made man had a funny habit of taking liberties with the truth. Like the famous character of his hero, the poet Homer, Schliemann was a crafty fellow and an inventor of stories, a traveler who had been shipwrecked and stranded and somehow survived. And Heinrich Schliemann was determined to become a legend like Homer — but in his own time.
Following this larger-than-life character from his poor childhood in Germany to his achievement of wealth as a merchant in Russia, from his first haphazard dig for the city of Ilium to his final years living in a pseudo "Palace of Troy," this engrossing tale paints a portrait of contradictions—
a man at once stingy and lavishly generous, a scholar both shrewd and reckless, a speaker of twenty-two languages and a health fanatic addicted to cold sea baths. Laura Amy Schlitz weaves historical facts among Schliemann's fanciful recollections, while Robert Byrd's illustrations evoke his life and times in wonderful detail. Along the way,
THE HERO SCHLIEMANN gives young readers food for discussion about how history sometimes comes to be written — and how it sometimes needs to be changed. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

A Real Hero?
This is about an awful man, but what a man!He's devious, deceptive, lucky, pathetic, poor, brilliant, then rich--wow.
His real life was amazing, but I want to read about heroes, and he's NOT heroic.There's nothing wrong with the author's writing ability, but she picked such a loser of a man to write about that I wasn't rooting for him.
Can I recommend this book?Only if you're really interested in ancient Troy.

Dishonesty pays well!
" The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake."
Alan Greenspan- Dishonesty
-----------------------------------------------------
The "... hot headed, touchy, and dreamy..."[pg. 61] egomaniac, "Storyteller, archaeologist, and crook -- Heinrich Schliemann left his mark upon the world."[72] thanks tohis vivid "... imagination changed archaeology forever."[pg.72] through misrepresentation of facts which paid off handsomely. "I have had more luck than foresight in my life," he admitted. It could also be said that he made his own luck."[72.] "... his enemies simply could not stand him. They were disgusted by his romaticism, his boasting, his hysterical excitement... a shrill and vulgar little man."[pg. 56.]

He was offensive:

-- with regard to the meeting of his second wife "The Engastromenos family was excited by the prospect of having a millionaire in the family..." [pg. 38]."When Heinrich spoke to her alone he asked her point-blank, 'Why do you wish to marry me?' Sophia replied, 'Because my parents have told me that you are a rich man!'"[pg. 38]. Infuriated, he pondered that "truth hurts."
In the marriage, the much younger Sophia was wise in thought "...Henry was a genius and that geniuses were not quite like other people."

-- Instead of carefully sifting through the mound, layer by layer, he decided to dig out vast trenches -- rather as if he were removing slices from a cake... And so he dug, violently and impatiently. Frank Calvert advised him to proceed with care, to sift through what he was throwing away, but Heinrich was not a cautious man. He wacked away at the mound as if it were a pinata.
Modern archaeologists do not dig like this. They remove the earth gently and keep detailed records of what they find. If they find an artifact that isn't what they're hoping to find, they don't discard the artifact: they change their ideas. Instead of looking for something, they examine whatever comes to light. Heinrich, ofcourse, was looking for Homer's Troy. 'Troy.. was sacked twice,' modern archaeologists remark, 'once by the Greeks and once by Heinrich Schliemann.' It is generally agreed that Schliemann did more damage than the Greeks." [pages 40-41.]

--"The admission 'I shared Frank Calvert's opinion' changed gradually to 'Frank Calvert, the famous archaeologist... shares my opinion...' Eventually Heinrich who admitted that he was 'a braggart and a bluffer,' made the discovery sound as if it were his alone." [pg. 35.]

Had this book or one similar to it,accompanied my forced reading in middle school of The Illiad, it may have been less an ordeal. Teachers, think about including interesting extra reading material when having your students read The Illiad (and the like), lest you loose them!

Graverobber mentality, scary man, scary book!

the hero schlieman
a childrens book.Very nice.I found the author a little too cynical about Schleimann who was a reall romantic

What a Find
This is first and foremost a good story, well told, with a style lively and lucid enough to engage all readers, not just kids. It is well-researched, well-documented and just plain captivating. Both text and illustrations (Robert Byrd)have a gentle humor that almost make the reader unaware of how much information is being presented. By portraying Schlieman honestly but with sympathy, Amy Schlitz very likely will inspire young readers to believe they too can follow their dreams wherever they lead. (My first review for Amazon, and I don't know either author or illustrator. I just admire the book.)

Humor and Humanity
Schliemann, Laura Schlitz notes wryly, had "lie" in the middle of his name.With wit and feeling, she brings to life his entertaining true adventures--and his entertaining lies.He is real, and very human: Brilliant. Arrogant.Maddening.Improbable.And very, very lucky. We get to see his triumphs and his flaws, to root for him and be appalled by him, to enjoy his life and be saddened by his death.

This is for children with an interest in archaeology, history, Greek mythology--or just a great story.It is so well told that it may spark new interests:It tells a bit about Homer, the Illiad, and the Odyssey; it contains an easy, amusing explanation of "stratification"--the layers that archaeologists must dig through, and the history contained in each; and there are notes on the bibliography to guide readers who want to know more.

Robert Byrd's fanciful illustrations capture the grandeur and humor perfectly.
... Read more

Product Description
This is the story of one man's determined quest to find Homer's fabled city of Troy. In 1873, Heinrich Schliemann discovered the legendary city of Troy. He unearthed temples, palaces, and great stores of treasure, as well as the homes of ordinary people, and discovered much that matched Homer's descriptions. This book chronicles one man's quest and its success. It recreates the everyday life of the Trojan people, and adds color and depth to a reding of Homer's Iliad. ... Read more