The contribution of Margarete Gütschow to Sarkophag-Corpus: surveys and photographic documentation in Rome and Lazio between 1925 and 1933, in M. Ayarzagüena Sanz, G. Mora, J. Salas Álvarez (edd.),150 años de Historia de la Arqueología: Teoría y Método de una disciplina, Madrid 2017, pp. 493-502.

This presentation focuses on the figure of the German archaeologist Margarete Gütschow (1871-1951), who lived and worked in Rome for the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, between 1910 -1914 and again between 1925 and 1942. In these last seventeen years, Margarete Gütschow was primarily an assistant to Professor Gerhart Rodenwaldt, on behalf of whom she did researches in connection with projects related to the Corpus der antiken Sarkophagreliefs. In fact the scholar, expert connoisseur of the funerary sculpture, collected detailed information on Roman sarcophagi, first to update the II Volume of “Antike Bildwerke in Rom” by Fr. Matz and Fr. von Duhn. The collected data were also useful for Rodenwaldt’s researches and for the elaboration of new volumes of Sarkophag-Corpus, that were “Die Meerwesen auf den antiken Sarkophagreliefs” by Andreas Rumpf and “Die Jahreszeiten- Sarkophage”, that she should have to write. Gütschow created at the same time also a kind of small photographic archive of the sarcophagi, which in 1933 merged in the photographic archive of German Archaeological Institute, as indicated in the registers. The analysis and study of the photographic collection by Margarete Gütschow has made it possible to identify an interesting variety of contexts in Rome and Lazio, which in many cases are deeply changed today, as well as collections, that no longer exist, or sarcophagi sold on the antiquities market and in some cases lost.