In the debate about the social structure of the Central European Early Iron Age, the "Herrenhof" plays a considerable role as the presumed seat of a high-status farmer. A rectangular farmstead of this type is the famous "Hascherkeller" on the northern outskirts of Landshut, which dates mainly from the early Hallstatt period. Here, in 1978, the first ever magnetic prospection was carried out on such an archaeological structure. The site became widely known because of its distinctive, complex appearance and the excavations conducted between 1978 and 1981 by Peter S. Wells, then assistant curator of European archaeology at Harvard University's Peabody Museum.