Brather received his
PhD in archaeology from the
Humboldt University of Berlin in 1995 with a thesis
Feldberger Keramik und frühe Slawen: Studien zur nordwestslawischen Keramik der Karolingerzeit. In 2002 his habilitation thesis in
University of Freiburg was
Ethnische Interpretationen in der frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie: Geschichte, Grundlagen und Alternativen. In the next two years worked as research assistant at
Goethe University in Frankfurt and Main, to return to Freiburg where taught as a holder of
GRF scholarship. Since 2006 has been Professor of Prehistoric and Medieval Archaeology at the same university. A member of the Historical Commission for Silesia and
German Archaeological Institute, since 2003 is co-editor of the Journal of Medieval
Archaeology and since 2011 contributes as co-editor to the
Germanische Altertumskunde Online published by
De Gruyter. Brather has conducted much research on the archaeology of
late antiquity and
Middle Ages especially about the
West Slavs. Brather in a similar fashion of
processual archaeology considers
ethnic identity to be a social construct which is out of reach of archaeology and argues against
culture-historical methodology of easily making direct links between material culture and ethnic identities. == Bibliography ==