Srečko Brodar (1893–1987) was a Slovenian archaeologist. He pioneered the study of the Palaeolithic period in Slovenia and substantially contributed to its development in the other republics of the former Yugoslavia, especially Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.[1]
Brodar first studied at the University of Zagreb, graduating in 1920. He began his archaeological career in 1928 with the excavation of Potočka Zijalka, an Upper Palaeolithic cave site in northern Slovenia, and went on to discover five new Palaeolithic sites in Slovenia, demonstrating the link between the Palaeolithic cultures of the eastern Alps and those of the Pannonian Plain and northern Italy. In 1939 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Ljubljana, and became a professor there in 1946. After the Second World War Brodar's research focused on Betalov Spodmol, a multiperiod prehistoric site near Postojna in southwest Slovenia. He also discovered the first Mesolithic sites in Slovenia, such as Spehovka cave.[1]
Brodar was the director of the Institute of Archaeology at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and a member of the International Union for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences.[1] He won a Prešeren Award in 1949 for his excavations at Betalov Spodmol.[2]