Skip to main content
  • Book
  • © 2023

National-Socialist Archaeology in Europe and its Legacies

  • Examines the historical specificities of national-socialist archaeology and defines its legacies

  • Draws on a broad diversity of textual, visual, material, archival, and multi-site research

  • Presents national-socialist archaeology as a denationalizing, racially unifying pan-European project

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Table of contents (28 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
  2. Introduction: National Socialist Archaeology in Europe and Its Legacies

    • Martijn Eickhoff, Katie Meheux, Daniel Modl
    Pages 1-43
  3. Archaeology in Austria During the Nazi Era

    • Daniel Modl, Gudrun Wlach
    Pages 65-98
  4. National Socialist Archaeology in Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia

    • Martin Oliva, Petr Kostrhun
    Pages 99-125
  5. National Socialist Archaeology in the Low Countries

    • Martijn Eickhoff, Erwin Nuijten
    Pages 187-207
  6. National Socialist Archaeology and France

    • Laurent Olivier
    Pages 209-233
  7. The Kunstschutz in World War II Occupied Crete

    • Georgia Flouda
    Pages 281-302
  8. Archaeology in Ukraine During World War II

    • Daniel Modl, Dmytro Teslenko
    Pages 367-392

About this book

This edited volume is dedicated to national-socialist archaeology as a Europe-wide phenomenon. It analyses national-socialist attempts to denationalize the archaeologies of European nations by creating a new unifying European archaeology on a racial basis.


From the beginning of the nineteenth century, archaeology began to develop into an important force behind processes of nation building. At the same time, structures of transnational academic collaboration contributed strongly to the internal dynamics of the research field, which was primarily organized on a national basis.


In those European countries that were confronted with national-socialist occupation and repression between 1939 and 1945, these transnational archaeological networks were to prove crucial for the development of national-socialist archaeological policies.


This volume will reveal how national-socialist archaeology was to an extent valued positively in its time as highly innovative, even influencing the archaeology of non-occupied countries. Although in the final instance, it generally failed to displace the national archaeologies in Europe, the volume also analyses the long-term impact of national-socialist rule on the development of European archaeology. How did the attempts to create a unified European archaeology after 1945 continue to influence networks, methods and terminologies, institutional structures, or popular representations of the early past?

Keywords

  • national-socialist politics in Germany and occupied Europe
  • scholarly development in the history of archaeology
  • archaeology & the spread of the national-socialist worldview
  • complex entanglement between archaeology and society
  • attempt to de-nationalize the archaeologies of Europe

Editors and Affiliations

  • NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Martijn Eickhoff, Erwin Nuijten

  • Department of Archaeology & Coin Cabinet, Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria

    Daniel Modl

  • UCL Library Services, Institute of Archaeology Library, London, UK

    Katie Meheux

About the editors

Martijn Eickhoff is director of NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and professor by special appointment of Archaeology and Heritage of War and Mass Violence at the University of Groningen. He researches the history, cultural dimensions, and after-effects of large-scale violence and regime change in Europe and Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Daniel Modl is curator and research assistant at the Department of Archaeology & Coin Cabinet at the Universalmuseum Joanneum in Graz. His primary areas of expertise lie in history of archaeology, archaeometallurgy, mining archaeology, speleology, and experimental archaeology. He recently published the edited volume 'Archäologie in Österreich 1938-1945' (2020), which contains over 30 contributions by international authors on archaeological research in Austria during the Nazi era.

Katie Meheux works for the University College London department of Libraries, Culture, Collections and Open Science (LCCOS) as the librarian of the Institute of Archaeology Library. An archaeologist by training, her research focuses on the history and historiography of archaeology, with a particular interest in the twentieth-century development of the profession within contemporary political contexts. Katie is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a member of HARN (Histories of Archaeology Research Network).

 

Erwin Nuijten is a project assistant at NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. After his studies in anthropology, he followed the Masters programme Holocaust and Genocide Studies and completed his second Masters degree in 2015. In 2016 he became the project assistant and managing editor for this edited volume.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: National-Socialist Archaeology in Europe and its Legacies

  • Editors: Martijn Eickhoff, Daniel Modl, Katie Meheux, Erwin Nuijten

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28024-5

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2023

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-28023-8Published: 15 August 2023

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-28026-9Due: 29 August 2024

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-28024-5Published: 14 August 2023

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XI, 691

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Archaeology, History of World War II and the Holocaust

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access