For this purpose, the forms, functions and developments of individual habitats and settlement systems are explored by means of archaeological surveys and excavation.
One of the core tenets of Kossinna's teaching was that sharply defined archaeological cultural areas coincide at all times with particular peoples (Völkern) or tribes.
[2] In the Postwar Era the empirical collecting of facts and their chronological and spatial arrangement was declared the main goal of research, which set the final course for today's German archaeology.
Researchers such as Gerhard Bersu, Hermann Stoll, and Robert Rudolf Schmidt, who worked mainly in southern Germany, were among this pioneering phase of modern settlement archeology.
The excavations at the Federsee, for example, involved the natural sciences at an early stage (pollen analysis (Palynology), moor geology and geomorphology, dendrochronology, radiocarbon dating, archaeozoology and archaeobotany, paleoclimatology, material research, etc.).