Leipzig group

The Leipzig group in archaeology refers to the Slavic pottery from the Early to High Middle Ages (from 7-8th to 13th century) in the Elbe-Saale area in today's state of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia.

[4] In the period of the 1960s–1980s in GDR became prevalent East German archaeologists' theorization which was ideologically and politically motivated, most prominently represented by its main opinion leader Joachim Herrmann (also advanced by Hansjürgen Brachmann[5][6][7]).

[5][9][11][12][8][13][14][15] It also made possible to claim Middle Danubian influence and origin of Leipzig's Rüssen-type dating it to the second half of the 6th century and "had in mind a potential parallel with the Serbs and Croats and the Balkans".

All of them have been corrected and the old model literature is deemed outdated and has been rejected by modern archaeologists because of revised and new archaeological research of settlements, hillforts, house construction, graves, and pottery as well as radiocarbon dating, palynology, and dendrochronology since the 1980s which shows that the old model was "seriously wrong" and dated "two-three hundred years too early".

The types of pottery are not "specific for single Slavic tribes in its distribution" and "have no solid basis in written and archaeological evidence" (for example Tornow-type was also present on the assumed tribal territory of Leipzig-type[17]).

[7] Different pottery types including Leipzig-type mainly represent a range of 8th century and later regional variations and introduction of new technologies that emerged from intercultural relations mostly by Carolingian and Ottonian era influence among already settled Slavs.

[31][41] The pottery is similar to contemporaneous Feldberg from East Germany, Raciborz-Chodlik from Southern Poland, and Luka-Rajkovets'ka group from Western Ukraine.

[33] A number of metal finds show occurrence at least from mid to second half of the 9th century, and a 14C dating gave around 880 ± 60 AD.