Sebastian Brather

Sebastian Brather (born 28 June 1964) is a German medieval archaeologist and co-editor of Germanische Altertumskunde Online.

Career Brather received his PhD in archaeology from the Humboldt University of Berlin in 1995 with a thesis Feldberger Keramik und frühe Slawen: Studien zur nordwestslawischen Keramik der Karolingerzeit.

In 2002 his habilitation thesis in University of Freiburg was Ethnische Interpretationen in der frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie: Geschichte, Grundlagen und Alternativen. In the next two years worked as research assistant at Goethe University in Frankfurt and Main, to return to Freiburg where taught as a holder of GRF scholarship. Since 2006 has been Professor of Prehistoric and Medieval Archaeology at the same university.

A member of the Historical Commission for Silesia and German Archaeological Institute, since 2003 is co-editor of the Journal of Medieval Archaeology and since 2011 contributes as co-editor to the Germanische Altertumskunde Online published by De Gruyter.

Brather has conducted much research on the archaeology of late antiquity and Middle Ages especially about the West Slavs. Brather in a similar fashion of processual archaeology considers ethnic identity to be a social construct which is out of reach of archaeology and argues against culture-historical methodology of easily making direct links between material culture and ethnic identities.