[Archaeology and criminology--Strengths and weaknesses of interdisciplinary cooperation].

Interdisciplinary cooperation of archaeology and criminology is often focussed on the scientific methods applied in both fields of knowledge. In combination with the humanistic methods traditionally used in archaeology, the finding of facts can be enormously increased and the subsequent hermeneutic deduction of human behaviour in the past can take place on a more solid basis. Thus, interdisciplinary cooperation offers direct and indirect advantages.

[Hans Gross as an archaeologist--the significance of archaeology for 'encyclopedic' criminology].

In some cases, forensics and criminology have to cooperate with disciplines that usually are counted among the humanities, e.g. with archaeology.

[Truth curves on soot blackened paper--apparatus-supported lie detection in Graz in the 1920s].

In the 1920s, experiments with apparatus-supported lie detection and registration of expression were conducted at the Criminological Institute of the University of Graz in order to establish a sound methodological basis for testimony research. For this purpose, the criminologist Ernst Seelig used a method of lie detection developed by the psychologist Vittorio Benussi, which focuses on the analysis of breathing. Benussi had stated that the expiration after telling a lie was faster than after telling the truth, but Seelig could not verify this rule in forensic practice.

[Criminology and superstition at the turn of the 19th century].

Criminology, which institutionalised at university level at the turn of the 19th century, was intensively engaged in the exploration of superstition. Criminologists investigated the various phenomena of superstition and the criminal behaviour resulting from it. They discovered bizarre (real or imagined) worlds of thought and mentalities, which they subjected to a rationalistic regime of interpretation in order to arrive at a better understanding of offences and crimes related to superstition.

[Traces of blood. The significance of blood in criminology at the turn of the 19th century].

In late 19th and early 20th century, criminology became institutionalized as an independent branch of science. Methodologically it focused on the 'exact' methods of the natural sciences, but also it tried to integrate the methods of the humanities. This mix of methods becomes visible in the treatment of blood, which on the one hand was an object of then brand new methods of scientific analysis (identification of human blood by the biological or precipitin method), and on the other hand was analyzed as a product of the magic and superstitious mentalities of criminals.

[Hans Gross and the beginning of criminology on a scientific basis].

Modern criminology--if one wants to consider it a separate scientific discipline at all--is usually perceived as being mainly influenced by the methods of natural sciences supplemented by components from the field of psychology, which, at least in some of its conceptions, tends to define itself as a natural science, too. If we take a look at the history of science, we will see development of criminology in this direction was not necessarily inevitable. The scientific work of the Austrian Hans Gross (1847-1915), one of the founding fathers of scientific criminology, serves as an example of the way how natural sciences and their exact methods became established in the methodological apparatus of modern criminology, although in praxi his claim for the application of exact methods was all too often replaced by irrational and intuitive ways of working.