Bror Emil Hildebrand (22February 1806 in

Madesjö Nybro Municipality (''Nybro kommun'') is a municipality in Kalmar County, south-eastern Sweden, with its seat in the town Nybro. The amalgamation of the ''City of Nybro'' (instituted in 1932) with its surrounding municipalities took place in 196 ...

30August 1884) was a Swedish archaeologist,

numismatist A numismatist is a specialist in numismatics ("of coins"; from Late Latin ''numismatis'', genitive of ''numisma''). Numismatists include collectors, specialist dealers, and scholars who use coins and other currency in object-based research. Altho ...

and museum director. From 1837 to 1879 he was Custodian of Ancient Monuments and Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters. From 1847 he was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and from 1866 a member of the Swedish Academy. In 1866, he founded the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm. In 1830 Hildebrand became reader in numismatics at the University of Lund. About this time he was also taught archaeology by C.J. Thomsen in nearby Copenhagen. This led to Hildebrand's introduction of Thomsen's famous

three-age system The three-age system is the periodization of human pre-history (with some overlap into the historical periods in a few regions) into three time-periods: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age; although the concept may also refer to ...

in Sweden. His main scholarly legacy lies within the field of Medieval Anglo-Saxon numismatics, where he produced pioneering catalogues and studies. Much of this work was indirectly due to agricultural reforms in Sweden that led to Viking Period silver coin hoards surfacing at a rate never seen before or after Hildebrand's day; the 1864 edition of Hildebrand's ''Anglo-Saxon coins in the Swedish Royal Coin Cabinet'' drew on the evidence of 64 Swedish hoards alongside other European finds to establish the basic chronology of the late Anglo-Saxon coinage, much of which has remained valid after more than a century of subsequent research. Hildebrand was the father of archaeologist

Hans Hildebrand Hans Olof Hildebrand Hildebrand (5 April 1842 – 2 February 1913) was a Swedish archeologist. He is internationally known as one of the pioneers of the archaeological technique of typology. Biography Born in Stockholm, he was the son of Bror E ...

and teacher both to him and to archaeologist

Oscar Montelius Gustav Oscar August Montelius, known as Oscar Montelius (9September 18434November 1921) was a Swedish archaeologist who refined the concept of seriation, a relative chronological dating method. Biography Oscar Montelius refined the concept ...

References

1806 births 1884 deaths People from Nybro Municipality Swedish archaeologists Lund University alumni Numismatists Members of the Swedish Academy Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 19th-century Swedish scientists {{Sweden-archaeologist-stub