Unlocking the Past: The Raetian Culture and the Frankfurth Legacy at the Milwaukee Public Museum

Abstract

The cultural group called the Raetians, also known as the Fritzens-Sanzeno Culture, inhabited the Tirol area of the Alps (modern day north-east Italy and south-west Austria) between the 6th century BCE and the 1st century CE. Defined largely based on their material culture, which incorporated elements borrowed from the Etruscans and the continental Celts, the Raetians were eventually annexed by the Roman empire. German American antiquarian William Frankfurth excavated Raetian remains in various locations in the Tirol in the late 19th century. Following his unexpected death in Vienna in 1891, several crates of artifacts from his excavations were shipped back to Milwaukee, where they languished in obscurity at the Milwaukee Public Museum for more than 100 years. Frankfurth is now considered to be one of the pioneers of early archaeological investigation of the prehistory and early history of the southern Tirol, and some of the MPM material has been published in various contexts. However, the Frankfurth collection was never completely cataloged, and over the decades, provenience information was largely lost. Research on this collection, especially the non-Roman artifacts, has been minimal, leading to its status as an orphan collection. This thesis makes use of diagnostic sherds to provide provenience and time period information for the collection. In addition, several diagnostic ceramic vessels are presented using 3D modelling, increasing the educational value of the collection for scholars and providing a methodology for how to make similar orphan collections more accessible.