Kossinna

Türkiye arkeolojisi kültür tarihçi bir kuramsal çerçeve içinde yapılmaktadır. Bu durum, genellikle Alman arkeoloji geleneğinin yarattığı bir sonuç olarak, Türkiye arkeolojisinin
‘geri kalmışlığının’ başat nedeni olarak tarif edilir. Ne var ki, arkeolojinin 20. yüzyılın başındaki Avrupa’daki gelişimine yakından baktığımızda, Türkiye arkeolojisinin kuramsal yönelimlere olan mesafeli ve kuşkucu yaklaşımının salt Alman geleneğini devralmaktan kaynaklanmadığı, disiplinin yerel gelişiminin bu durumu yaratan daha önemli bir etken olduğu görülecektir. Bu yazıda, kuramsal arkeolojiye olan ilgisizliğin
ve bilgisizliğin nedenini bir günah keçisinin üzerine yıkmak yerine, kendimize dönük refleksif bir hesaplaşmanın sorunu inceleme yolunda daha etkin bir yol olacağı savunulacaktır.
Anahtar kelimeler: Kültür tarihçiliği, Almanya arkeolojisi, Kossinna, Türkiye arkeolojisi, kuramsal arkeoloji, arkeoloji tarihi

The paper analyses the role of the German archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna in the formation of the idea of archaeological culture. Often this concept is taken as an unquestionable given and Kossinna’s life and work have been presented as an exception in the European archaeology, but it may be much more productive to consider it as "the tip of an iceberg".
It is argued that the simplified concept of ethnicity and the search for its reflections in the archaeological record have long become commonplace of the discipline, and considered almost irreplaceable in the local archaeological community.

Die Geschichte der Lehrsammlung des Lehrstuhls für Ur- und Frühgeschichte (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) reicht zurück bis an den Beginn universitärer Urgeschichtsforschung in Berlin am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts. Bereits unter Gustaf Kossinna begann man eine Sammlung von archäologischen Objekten anzulegen. Unter Hans Reinerth, der seit 1935 das neu gegründete Institut für Vor- und germanische Frühgeschichte an der damaligen Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität zu Berlin leitete, erfolgte der planmäßige Ausbau des Sammlungsbestands. Aus dieser Zeit erhaltene Rechnungsunterlagen geben ein recht detailliertes Bild darüber ab, welche Summen in den Jahren des Institut-Aufbaus für die Lehrsammlung zur Verfügung gestanden haben und welche Objekte gekauft worden sind. (…) Im Folgenden soll eine repräsentative Auswahl an Sammlungen und Einzelobjekten vorgestellt werden, um aufzuzeigen, dass das Spektrum an vorhanden Material durchaus in der Lage ist, den qualitativen Mangel in Bezug auf den Befundkontext aufzuwiegen. (…) Die Vielschichtigkeit der Sammlungsobjekte eröffnet ein breites Feld für Ideen und Möglichkeiten. Als universitäre Einrichtung liegt es m. E. nahe, die Lehrsammlung als regelmäßig wiederkehrendes Forum, eine Begegnungsstätte oder allgemein einen Ort aufzufassen, auf dem in verstärktem Maß dem Dialog zwischen Archäologie und Öffentlichkeit Rechnung getragen wird.

Foreword
    Leo Klejn is an extraordinary individual: a polymath, an intellectual provocateur, not least a survivor of the events of his own life. He is also almost certainly the only theoretical archaeologist from the Soviet Union and Russia that Anglophone audiences have ever heard of, although these days I wonder how many even that is true of. Even if they know the name they probably know next to nothing about the man and his ideas. I hope Stephen Leach’s excellent book changes that. It certainly deserves to. The subject might be thought rather forbidding, but I found the book compulsive. Part of the reason for this is Klejn’s amazing life story, but what gives the book its special power and attraction is that it is less a standard intellectual biography and much more a dialogue between the author and Klejn himself. This approach gives a powerful sense of what the man is like—brilliant, argumentative, iron-willed, never one to accept the conventional view or the easy path—and with the toughness to take the consequences of these character traits for his life in the old Soviet Union and after.
    But in presenting Klejn’s ideas in their context the book is also a window on a very different intellectual world, an archaeological tradition that has developed almost entirely independently of the Anglo-American one and is largely unknown to most of us. It is not just about archaeology though. We are told that Klejn has said that ‘in his life he had but one legal wife, archaeology, but many mistresses—anthropology, history, philology, and folklore studies’. His wide-ranging intellectual curiosity and remarkable productivity means he has made book-length contributions to all of these, and Leach gives each of them its due. In the end, though, like Klejn, it is the archaeology we return to and in particular to his views about the relationship between archaeology and history. Here and elsewhere I’m sure most readers from the Anglo-American tradition will find much that provokes them to debate and disagreement, but before embarking on this debate they should certainly read and ponder this book’s indispensable appendix of archaeological and academic ‘commandments’ that were on the walls for Klejn’s student seminars.
    We should all be very grateful to Stephen Leach for writing this hugely engaging introduction to an extraordinary man and his ideas.
Stephen Shennan

Gustaf Kossinna is undoubtedly among the most influential archaeologists of the early 20th century. Although his methodology was followed by many scholars, the strongly nationalist direction of his studies led, following its instrumentalization by the nazi regime, to a negative evaluation of his work. The aim of this paper is to achieve a critical approach to Kossinna as a controversial figure of prehistoric studies by placing him in historical context as well as to assess his impact on the development of the archaeological discipline.