Georg Loeschke

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Georg Loeschcke (1852 in Penig, Saxony, Germany - 1915 in Baden-Baden, Germany) was an archaeologist and scholar of Greek pottery. Georg Loeschcke studied archaeology under Johannes Overbeck in Leipzig 1871-73, along with his fellow student Adolf Furtwängler. He continued his studie at Bonn with Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz where he specialized in ancient pottery. He traveled to Greece and Italy in 1877, funded by a stipend from the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut so that he could examine and study the finds of Heinrich Schliemann's excavations, which at the time were considered to be of little importance. The result of his findings was an important book on Mycenaean pottery. Mykenische Thongefäße, written with Furtwängler in 1879, established the basic chronology of Mycenaean ceramics. That same year Loeschcke accepted a professorship in philology and archaeology at the university in Dorpat, (modern Tartu, Estonia). While at Dorpat he published his second major work on Mycenaean pottery, also with Furtwängler, Mykenische Vasen, in 1886. In 1887 he was named first secretary to the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Athens. When Kekulé advanced to the university in Berlin, Loeschcke replaced him in Bonn in 1889. At Bonn, he supervised many dissertations including those of Margaret Bieber, Hans Dragendorff, Paul Jacobsthal, Georg Karo, T. Leslie Shear (1880-1945) and Fritz Weege (1880-1945). Loeschcke again succeeded Kekulé in Berlin when Kekulé died in 1912.

Loeschcke and Furtwängler revolutionized the approach to ancient pottery, basing it less upon esthetic appreciation and more on historical evaluation. Their analysis of Mycenaean pottery established it as distinct from Geometric pottery. They concluded that pottery could be used to date an excavation by determining the latest styles to be found there. Loeschcke's later research focused on the limes (outskirts) of the Roman world. In Loeschcke's case, he analyzed the Rhineland digs, dating them accurately through artifacts ignored by other scholars.

[edit] Bibliography

• and Furtwängler, Adolf. Mykenische Thongefäße. Festschrift zur Feier des fünfzigjährigen Bestehens des Deutschen Archaeologischen Institutes in Rom. Berlin: A. Asher & Co., 1879.
• and Furtwängler, Adolf. Mykenische Vasen: vorhellenische Thongefässe aus dem Gebiete des Mittelmeeres. Berlin: Asher & Co., 1886.

[edit] Further reading

• Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 106-107.
• Medwid, Linda M. The Makers of Classical Archaeology: A Reference Work. New York: Humanity Books, 2000 pp. 186-88.
• Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 2, pp. 688.