Since the 16th century, curious earthen pots found in the soil had attracted the attention of pastors and physicians in Germany. For a long time it remained unclear whether the pots were man-made or of natural origin, although prior to 1546 Georgius Agricola had already recognized the pots as urns employed in pagan times for crematory burials. He attributed them to the pagan forefathers, the local German tribes known from Tacitus' Germania. Thus the urns were probably the first archaeological finds to stimulate ethnic identification. Perhaps due to the influence of the early Enlightenment and Pietism, research flourished in the 17th century in the Protestant territories of Northern and Eastern Germany.

The idea of a corpse being cremated before burial was abominable to the pastors, because the soul of the dead was thus irrevocably damned to hell. The urns attracted attention as macabre curiosities, and found their way into the collections of the territorial nobility. The terrifying pagan "antiquity" that revealed itself in the archaeological finds was suited to promote Christian identity as well as loyalty to the territorial prince, and to evoke regional patriotism.

What supplied the impetus for the publication of these finds and who read these reports? This part of the project is aimed at revealing the social and regional identities of some of the early scholars, and shedding light on the motivation for their research.