Udelgard Körber-Grohne (born July 11, 1923 in

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

, died November 6, 2014 in

Wiesensteig Wiesensteig is a town in the district of Göppingen in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. It is located on the river Fils, 16 km south of Göppingen. Geography Geographical location Wiesensteig is located in the upper Fils valley ...

) was a German

archaeobotanist Paleoethnobotany (also spelled palaeoethnobotany), or archaeobotany, is the study of past human-plant interactions through the recovery and analysis of ancient plant remains. Both terms are synonymous, though paleoethnobotany (from the Greek words ...

Early life and education

Körber-Grohne was born in Hamburg. Her father Ernst Grohne was an archaeologist and museum curator in

Bremen Bremen (Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (german: Stadtgemeinde Bremen, ), is the capital of the German state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (''Freie Hansestadt Bremen''), a two-city-state consis ...

. She studied biology at university, graduating from

Braunschweig Braunschweig () or Brunswick ( , from Low German ''Brunswiek'' , Braunschweig dialect: ''Bronswiek'') is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz Mountains at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, which connects it to the Nor ...

Technical University in 1948.

Career

In 1949 she began work at the

Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...

State Institute for Marsh and Wound Research in

Wilhelmshaven Wilhelmshaven (, ''Wilhelm's Harbour''; Northern Low Saxon: ''Willemshaven'') is a coastal town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the western side of the Jade Bight, a bay of the North Sea, and has a population of 76,089. Wilhelmsha ...

, where she studied archaeology and geology of the Lower Saxony coastal area. Her early work utilised pollen analysis to study vegetation history. Methodological advances included the identification of cereal pollen. She took over the archeobotanical analysis in the archaeological excavation project of the settlement Feddersen Wierde where she studied a large assemblage of waterlogged plant remains. This study was pioneering in the development of identification methods and the identification of past plant communities on the basis of archaeobotanical remains, the publication of which "set new standards for archaeobotany". After a family break and the death of her husband Körber-Grohne moved in 1970 to the

University of Hohenheim The University of Hohenheim (german: Universität Hohenheim) is a campus university located in the south of Stuttgart, Germany. Founded in 1818, it is Stuttgart's oldest university. Its primary areas of specialisation had traditionally been ...

and worked at the local Botanical Institute under Burkhard Frenzel. In the following years she was involved in the field of archaeobotany in southern Germany. She habilitated with her research work on Feddersen Wierde and was appointed as a professor in 1970. During this period she worked on a range of archaeological projects in south-west Germany, including archaeobotanical remains from the Roman castellum of

Welzheim Welzheim is a town in the Rems-Murr district, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is located 35 km east of Stuttgart, and 15 km northwest of Schwäbisch Gmünd. Welzheim has 11,239 (2005) inhabitants and is located in the 'Welzheimer Wal ...

, and the from the grave of a

Halstatt Hallstatt ( , , ) is a small town in the district of Gmunden, in the Austrian state of Upper Austria. Situated between the southwestern shore of Hallstätter See and the steep slopes of the Dachstein massif, the town lies in the Salzkammergut ...

chief at Hochdorf. She developed methodologies for the identification of ancient textile fragments, including a study of Viking finds from

Haithabu Hedeby (, Old Norse ''Heiðabýr'', German ''Haithabu'') was an important Danish Viking Age (8th to the 11th centuries) trading settlement near the southern end of the Jutland Peninsula, now in the Schleswig-Flensburg district of Schleswig-Holste ...

. Körber-Grohne retired in 1988, after which she continued to produce academic research. A key study was on the history of cherries, damsons, plums and sloes. Körber-Grohne was a member of the

German Archaeological Institute The German Archaeological Institute (german: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, ''DAI'') is a research institute in the field of archaeology (and other related fields). The DAI is a "federal agency" under the Federal Foreign Office of Germany ...

Honours

A festschrift was published in 1988 entitled ''Der prähistorische Mensch und seine Umwelt''.

Selected publications

* 1979. ''Nutzpflanzen und Umwelt im römischen Germanien.'' (''Kleine Schriften zur Kenntnis der römischen Besetzungsgeschichte Südwestdeutschlands'', Bd. 21) Stuttgart. * 1987. ''Nutzpflanzen in Deutschland. Kulturgeschichte und Biologie.'' Theiss, Stuttgart. * 1996. ''Pflaumen, Kirschpflaumen, Schlehen. Heutige Pflanzen und ihre Geschichte seit der Frühzeit.'' Theiss, Stuttgart. * 1998. ''Geobotanische Untersuchungen auf der Feddersen Wierde.'' (''Feddersen Wierde'', Bd. 1), Steiner Franz Verlag.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Körber-Grohne Udelgard 1923 births 2014 deaths Archaeobotanists German women archaeologists Scientists from Hamburg