The former East Prussia during the Roman Iron Age and Migration Period. The archaeological remains of the 1st to the 7th century from the former Prussia Collection Königsberg in the museums of Berlin (Museum of Pre- and Early History) and Kaliningrad (Museum of History and Arts)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Matthias Wemhoff
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 270967913

The project aims at the scientific analysis, reconstruction and the interpretation of the material culture from the Roman Iron Age and Migration period (1st to 7th century A.D.) in East Prussia from the collection of the former Prussia-Museum Königsberg in the inventory of the Museum of Pre- and Early History Berlin (MVF) and the Kaliningrad Museum of History and Arts. The finds from the Roman Iron Age and Migration period in the Prussia collection were not only the favorite research subject of the East Prussian archaeologists before the war, they were also in focus of the archaeological studies in Poland, Scandinavia and the Baltic States prior to 1945. The archive sources created during this period provide an important addition to the registration and understanding of the preserved objects in Berlin and Kaliningrad.The reconstruction of the intensive German research related to the Roman Iron Age and Migration period in East Prussia before 1945, based on the objects of the Prussia collection in Berlin and Königsberg, offers enormous potential for the modern research on the Central European Barbaricum - especially for current Polish, Russian and Lithuanian archeology in this region. The aims and work stages of this project include not only the registration of the existing objects and the reconstruction of the grave context with the help of the archival material, but also the scientific evaluation of selected cemeteries and groups of objects.After 12 months of project work, more than 3300 objects from Roman Iron Age and Migration period from the Berlin inventory of the Prussia collection were digitally recorded in a database. The data sets will be exported in the first half of 2017 to the online database of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (www.smb-digital.de) and are online freely available. Thus, the first half of the Roman Iron Age and Migration period objects in Berlin with related find sites are finished.At the same time, institutional cooperation between the museums in Berlin and Kaliningrad has been established and, for the first time since the war-induced separation of the Prussia collection, a joint systematic approach is started to reconstruct the former collection. In cooperation with the Russian colleagues in Kaliningrad more than 1,000 objects of the former Prussia collection were selected and registered, which will be re-evaluated with the aid of the Berlin archival materials in the second and third project year. The collected object data for the Kaliningrad inventory will also be accessible at the end of the project. This cooperation is an important part of the current and future scientific cooperation of German and Russian archaeologists in the Kaliningrad Oblast.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Michael Meyer