Early mediaeval archaeology

The study provides a brief summary and comparison of the knowledge on settlements existing during the time of the so-called Avar Khaganate, with the focus being the territory of Slovakia and the eighth century, but to a great extent including also the research of settlements in Hungary and in the areas of the extended khaganate. The study does not intend to be a complete and exhaustive list of the proved phenomena but attempts to define the framework in which Central European national archaeologies have interpreted some selected questions of settlement archaeology. It compares the residential buildings and the material culture, predominantly ceramics, along with the location of the settlements in the landscape, microregional and macroregional settlement research. Archaeological knowledge is to a great extent confronted with the written sources and historical research. The final part of the study is devoted to the ethnic interpretation of the archaeological findings in terms of the settlements in the areas of the interpretation of residential buildings, ceramics and the hypothesis of the Slavic language of the khaganate. The study includes the reasons why the Avar Khaganate should be considered as one of the inspirational sources for the formation, emergence and existence of (Great) Moravia in the ninth century.

The long-standing hypothesis about absence or low number of the settlements comparing them with burial grounds from the period of Avar Khaganate is no longer acceptable regarding the results of recent research and excavations. While the settlement of the Avar Khaganate period in Slovakia was the sole case in the 1930’s, number of new settlements has increased during the course of three or four decades by archaeological excavations. Ten settlement sites were known in 1988. Currently, the corpus of settlements from Slovakia contains 28 items with excavated features from the period of Avar Khaganate; other seven sites were found by surveys. Large corpuses are the most important. The aim of the present study is publication of features and material culture from the sites of Šaľa III (district of Šaľa), Úľany nad Žitavou and Pavlová (both in the Nové Zámky district). The study is also a general introduction to other two texts in the volume of Študijné zvesti AÚ SAV , focused on other two settlements of the Avar Khaganate period from Cífer, admin. part of Pác II and Kubáňovo II . The analysis and evaluation of the material is identical in all cases. Publication of the corpuses widens the archaeological sources for the period of 8th century AD. The settlements had no convincing traits of the status differences among the features or indications of their hierarchy, although the social stratification is observed in the Avar burial grounds. Sites with higher number of habitable features appear to be a dispersed form of settlement with several clusters of features. The thus far excavated settlements have shown that settlement forms in the period of Avar Khaganate do not differ significantly from Slavic rural settlements. This is not the evidence of the “Slavic ethnicity” of the forms of settlements (probably only the evidence of origin of some phenomena in Slavic milieu), but only a confirmation of similar or identical economic interrelations in the rural settlement structure. The traits from the settlement sites are evidence of the identical economic basis for the existence of Avar and Great Moravian ruling elite. The overview of other sites from the south-western Slovakia shows that there was no general rule for the establishment or abandonment of the settlements in the break of the 8th and 9th centuries. The diachronic differences between the horizons of the 8th and 9th century’s pottery are not yet well defined and regional differences possibly occur.

The authors deal with the issues of the beginnings of the parish system in the Czech lands, which formed the prerequisites for a deeper Christianisation of the rural milieu. Based on the distinctive transformations in burials observable in a large part of Bohemia and Moravia, they place the beginnings in the period around 1100 A. D. The evidence of the archaeological sources is confronted with the testimony of the written evidence and critically also with the conception of art historians, who do not suppose a boom of sacral architecture in the rural milieu until the second half of the 12th century and later. The shift of the beginnings of parish organisation further into the past opens a number of historical and methodological questions.

The article is part of the study of “non-residential” parts of early medieval central agglomerations in Bohemia and Moravia (Czech Republic). It is a new summary of our knowledge of the suburbium around the Great Moravian hillfort at Mikulčice. The suburbium consist of various kinds of settlements closely surrounding the fortified heart of the agglomeration. This area can be seen as a circle with a radius of 700 m around the centre of the agglomeration. In the 9th century there were eight separate areas here with evidence of dwellings, economic (artisan and in part
also agricultural), sacred and funeral activities.

Entre 2011 i 2013 s’han dut a terme una sèrie de treballs arqueològics a la torre del castell de Santa Perpètua de Gaià que proporcionen interessants dades tant de la seva cronologia i evolució cronològica, com de la seva construcció. La realització d’una sèrie d’anàlisis de C 14 en fustes de la torre original proporcionen una datació tant inesperada com sorprenent, que fa pensar en noves propostes de comprensió d’aquest interessant monument de la Catalunya Nova.

The village of Biskupija lies on the eastern side of Kosovo polje, and is 7 km from the city of Knin.Archaeological research here has revealed the existence of five Early Christian church buildings and the sites Crkvina, Lopuška glavica, Stupovi, Bukorovića podvornica and the substratum of today’sOrthodox Church of the Holy Trinity. Crkvina is the biggest and most important archaeological site excavated to date in the area of Biskupija.

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE INVESTIGATION OF THE EARLY MEDIEVAL FORTIFICATION OF PRAGUE.
Over the recent years, the amount of sources narrating about the medieval wood and clay wall belonging to the fortification system of Prague-Lesser Town (Praha-Malá strana) has increased significantly. The three most important sites (Josefská No. 42, Nerudova No. 249 a Karmelitská No. 387–Nebovidská No. 459),
where the mentioned wall had been exposed, were at least preliminary made public (Čiháková 2001; Čiháková – Havrda 1995; Havrda – Podliska 2003; Havrda – Tryml 2006). In 2007 a rescue excavation in Mostecká StreetNo. 276 took place. Straight under the floor construction of the cellar, a wood and clay wall
with a grillage structure and frontal stone covering was discovered. The discovered wall is part of an so far unknown line of early medieval fortification of Lesser Town. On the basis of scarce pottery finds and the results of radiocarbon dating, it was possible to date its origin to somewhere in the course of the 10th century.
The settlement development on the left riverside of the Prague basin was influenced by the morphology and position of this area, which is limited by the flow of the Vltava fromone side, or better to say by its extinct Holocene riverbed, and by the slopes of the PetřínHill and theHradčany promontory. Space suitable for further
settlement was therefore to be found to the south of the oldest core of the suburbium. The oldest wall encircled an area of 17.1 ha (central part of the outer bailey - i.e. the broader area ofMalostranské Square, the so-called "historic core").When another wall was built approximately 70 metres to the south of the older fortification, the fortified area of the suburbiumincreased just by 1.6 ha. It is necessary to add that thisminor enlargement did not serve for development and common settlement activities, but that it was probably exclusively used as a space for communication. In this way, the area of the platform in front of the bridge across the river (assembly point) became part of the walled area. After a certain time period, another enlargement to the south followed, this time by about 240 m. An area of 7.5 more ha (part of southern Lesser Town) became part of the fortification of the southern glacis of the conurbation. It is still not certain whether some of the fortification lines were contemporary. It is possible that there was a walled area consisting of several parts, but thesemight just as well be enlargement phases of the fortified area, when a later fortification gradually took up the function of the earlier one, which perished. The size of the early medieval suburbium could have reached 36 ha, if we also add Prague castle, a fortified area of 40 hamust be taken into account. A more precise reconstruction of the fortification of this early medieval conurbation is not possible. At the present state of processing of the results of recent archaeological excavations, it seems that the chronological
classification of the individual fortification lines or their parts, or possibly a confirmation of the contemporaneity of the lines, would be quite difficult. The recent archaeological findings however demonstrate an unusual dynamics of the early medieval proto-urbanised settlement centre on the left riverside of the Vltava.

The paper deals with the results of a small-scale excavation associated with the reconstruction of a gas pipeline in Velké Square. Although the terrain situations had been destroyed by later interventions, it was still possible to identify contexts associated with the use of this area as a road in the bailey of a Slavic hillfort or possibly dating from the time when a town was founded there in the first half of the 13th century.

Hradec Králové – Velké Square – Early Midlle Ages – hillfort

A controversial set of elite jewels assumed to be of early medieval period, recovered in 1937–1938 from a burial site in Matzhausen (northeastern Bavaria) was investigated to determine their technological coherency as well as their authenticity. The discovery of these jewels was exploited by German nationalists to argue that the material culture observed in Bohemia and Moravia in the ninth century had Germanic roots. The circumstances of their discovery, however, remain unclear. Research in archives demonstrated the involvement of the SS Ahnenerbe organisation in the recovery of the jewels. Are these jewels authentic or are they forgeries manufactured or modified by a modern craftsman to serve German expansionist nationalism? Three jewels recovered in the grave – a gombik (hollow spherical pendant), an earring with chainlet, and a zoomorphic figurine – were investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), X-radiography, and stereomicroscopy. The investigation revealed a very heterogeneous set of objects with respect to technology and state of preservation. It also uncovered repairs and past invasive interventions involving modern metal and solder. Comparison with similar types of jewels from Bohemia and Moravia points to important differences in construction and technology, which confirms the uniqueness of this set of objects and casts suspicion on their authenticity.

Poster presented by Georgi Atanasov (Регионален исторически музей – Silistra, Bulgaria), Nicolas Beaudry (Université du Québec à Rimouski, Canada), Albena Milanova (Софийски университет "Св. Климент Охридски", Bulgaria), Ioto Valeriev (Регионален исторически музей – Burgas, Bulgaria) and Dominic Moreau (Université de Lille, France), at the XIII национална изложба "Българска Архeология" / 13th National Exhibition "Bulgarian Archaeology" (NAIM, Sofia, 14 February-26 April 2020).

On the 13th February 2014 a conference on the archaeology of fortifications took place at the Department of Archaeology of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. Defensive architecture is represented in the archaeological record in a variety of forms and social contexts, and that is why it is an important issue for research in the social sciences. In total, 14 papers were presented at the conference, which chronologically
covered the periods from the Bronze Age to the Modern era. Some of these papers are published in this journal issue. Others had been published elsewhere and this introductory text refers to them in the bibliography. Besides a short overview of the individual conference papers, the author of this chapter situates the theme of the conference in the broader context of research on past societies.