Born in Stuttgart in 1900, Gustav Riek was an archaeologist from the University of Tübingen who worked with the SS Ahnenerbe in their excavations, and led the team that excavated the Heuneburg Tumulus burial mounds in 1937.
Several so-called Fürstensitze (a German term describing such sites, literally "princely seats") are known from Late Hallstatt and Early La Tène Europe, for example, the burials at Hochdorf and Magdalenenberg, the Heuneburg settlement and the Glauberg settlement and burial complex.