Stephan Bender

Stephan Bender (born 30 December 1965, in Giessen – died 20 June 2019, in Heidelberg) was a German archaeologist specialised in .

Education After completing his secondary education, Stephan Bender served two years of military service as a before enrolling at the Goethe University Frankfurt in the winter semester of 1987/1988. He later continued his studies at the University of Freiburg, focusing on provincial Roman archaeology, with minors in classical archaeology and ancient history. In 1993, he completed his studies and began working on his doctoral dissertation in Frankfurt, on Bronze Bowls with Flat Horizontal Handles ("Casseroles") in the context of finds from Naples, Pompeii, and Herculaneum. The dissertation written at the Frankfurt Graduate School for "Archaeological Analytics" and led to his Doctorate in 2007.

Career From 2000, Bender worked for the , cataloguing archaeological sites along the Roman Limes in Hesse as part of a joint application by the German states of Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, and Bavaria to have the Limes recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He played a key role in drafting the Limes Development Plan for Hesse, completed in 2005, the same year the Limes was designated as a World Heritage Site and Bender was appointed Hesse's first Limes Officer.

In 2007, Bender moved to Baden-Württemberg, where he established and led the Limes Information Centre at the . After 2013, he was employed by the . During this period, he also took on the coordination of the Limes Cicerones, a group of volunteer guides. Alongside these roles, Bender continued his research on the Limes, discovering the first evidence of wooden watchtowers in the western section of the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes, a possible small fort at the Dalkingen Limes Gate, and an extension of the Neckar-Odenwald Limes into the Neckar foreland. In 2015, he became head of the newly created "World Heritage Archaeology" department at the Baden-Württemberg State Office for Monument Preservation.

Bender died in Heidelberg in 2019 after a serious illness. In May 2020, the provincial Roman archaeologist Andreas Schaflitzl succeeded him as Limes Coordinator in Baden-Württemberg.

Publications Listed in order of publication year:

Contributions to: Dieter Planck: