Bettina Arnold | Anthropology, UW-Milwaukee

Standing on hillfort wall in Wales – 2017

About Me

Bettina Arnold’s area of expertise is the pre-Roman European Iron Age, but in the course of her career she has participated in archaeological projects ranging from the Middle Bronze Age through the early medieval period in western Europe. Since 1999 she has co-directed a research project in southwest-Germany focused on the burial record of the early Iron Age Heuneburg hillfort and its environs.

Early in her career, Dr. Arnold published a ground-breaking article on the use and abuse of archaeology for political purposes in Nazi Germany in Antiquity in 1990 that has been reprinted repeatedly. In addition to being the founding Editor of the online peer-reviewed journal e-Keltoi, she is a member of numerous editorial boards, including the History of Archaeology series for Oxford University Press and the American Anthropologist. She is also a member of the History of Archaeology Commission of the UISPP.

Current Research

Iron Age European mortuary analysis (“Landscape of Ancestors”),

the archaeology of gender, and

the history of archaeology.

Initially mainly concerned with tracking down dispersed collections from the famous Neolithic/Bronze Age Swiss lake dwelling site of Robenhausen, the project has expanded to include material from other iconic sites such as La Tène (also in Switzerland) as well as the Austrian/Italian Alpine region. Students with French and German language skills are encouraged to consider UW-Milwaukee for their Masters thesis work, as numerous interesting and in some cases important collections remain to be studied.

Future Research

An expansion of the “Landscape of Ancestors” project in southwest Germany in the form of additional materials analyses of grave goods from the 1999-2002 excavations as well as possible future excavations and/or surveys of mortuary monuments associated with the Heuneburg hillfort.

The development of a museum consortium for the purpose of collaborating on digitally reuniting dispersed collections from sites like Robenhausen and La Tène is underway and funding will be sought to support recording diasporic collections in order to make them available in digital form, ideally in an open access context.

In the context of the creation of a Fermentation Studies program at UW-Milwaukee, courses related to the Archaeology of Ancient Alcohol will be developed that will include the recreation of actual beverages based on archaeological evidence; collaborations with local craft brewers and other local organizations are actively being pursued and the ingredients for a range of archaeological attested beverages will be grown at least in part on the UW-Milwaukee campus.

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