"An archaeologist named Gustaf Kossinna (1858-1931), writes Maner, 'claimed that a "Germanic" people had continuously inhabited central and northern Europe from the Bronze Age to his present day.' The Nazis, as is well known, promoted similar ideas in even more noxious forms. Yet despite an undeniable link between archaeology and racism, this is only half the story. Many German archaeologists were far more interested in local or pan-European history and, unlike fiction writers, very cautious in making any claims about their 'ancestors.' This book examines the often ignored 'non-national approaches to archaeology [that] endured alongside the racist and nationalist perversion of prehistory.'"

Times Higher Education

"An especially ambitious addition to the growing literature on the subject, addressing both the provincial and the national efforts to reconstruct antiquity and to relate ancient pasts to modern communities. . . . Historians wishing to understand the various cultural meanings that contemporaries applied to antiquities will come away delighted with new details on familiar figures . . . . Maner does a good job of placing developments in Germany within a European context, something that is often overlooked in many similar national studies."

German History

"As Brent Maner shows in his excellent Germany’s Ancient Pasts, antiquarianism opened the door to often intense and politically charged debates about the role of prehistory in German society. . . . Brent Maner offers a balanced, erudite, and highly readable perspective on a topic of enduring interest to students of modern German cultural history."

Journal of Modern History

“This is a very fine book, based on rich and deep research. Germany’s Ancient Pasts provides a useful synthesis and overview of the development of what Maner calls ‘domestic’ archaeology, a field that embraces prehistory (Vorgeschichte), proto-history (Frühgeschichte), and also geology, ethnography, folklore studies, and physical anthropology. Detailing the wide variety of purposes domestic archaeology served in the period of its flourishing (roughly 1820–1914), Maner’s book tells an important and nuanced story about why it is that Germans, like other Europeans, became so involved in the excavation, collection, and exhibition of artifacts in the years after Napoleon’s demise.”

Suzanne L. Marchand, Louisiana State University | author of "German Orientalism in the Age of Empire" and "Down from Olympus"