Archaeological sources provide a wide range of information to help understand the social structure of human society in the past. In this paper, the authors deal with the information potential of grave pit modifi cations and wooden structures in graves at burial sites in the central region of Great Moravia (southeast Moravia, southwest Slovakia). The goal at this point is to defi ne the basic hypotheses and describe the methodological basis along with the research methodology. The authors treat the sources holistically, which means that one of the methodological foundations is the claim that the properties of the whole are not a simple sum of its parts. This means that all recognized elements of the funeral rite and their mutual relations and functions are the center of attention of this research. The primary basis for the research is the assumption that the presence of various wooden structures or wooden burial receptacles in the graves of the Great Moravian period is a common cultural occurrence. It further tests the hypothesis that there was intent behind choosing of these different wooden structures and grave pit modifi cations and their usage, as well as a potential differentiation based on age or gender in the frequency, quality and selection of these modifi cations/arrangements and structures. The main methodological tools are statistical and GIS analysis and the results are compared with published fi ndings from the wider Central European region., Marian Mazuch, Marek Hladík., and Obsahuje seznam literatury
This article is an archaeological report on the results of the excavation carried out around the fi lled-up river branch and bridge No. 1 in Mikulčice in 2012 (excavation B 2012). The main aim of the research was to complete the fi eld works at bridge No. 1, which was discovered during the large-scale excavations performed at the defunct river channel in front of the NW gate of the bailey in 1966-1968. At the same time, the question of how the river channel developed at the site of the bridge was investigated, as well as the topic of the settlement in the wider area between the bailey and the north-western suburb. Presented along with the interpretation of the movable fi nds from the defunct river branch were two possible variants on how the settlement developed in relation to the gradual fi lling-up of the river channel. After analysing the fi nd circumstances in area B 2012, the authors inclined towards the second variant and thus revised the existing theories concerning the evolution of sedimentation in the area of the extinct riverbed. This has helped to resolve some key questions regarding the existence and demise of the power centre in Mikulčice., Marek Hladík, Lumír Poláček., and Obsahuje seznam literatury
The subject of this analysis is Bridge No. 1 in Mikulčice, which was discovered during a large-scale archaeological excavation of a former riverbed between the years 1966 and 1968 and revisited in 2012. Although it is the best preserved bridge in Mikulčice, reconstucting it faces a number of limitations. The aim of this article is to define in more detail such limitations as well as possibilities, drawing on previous attempt to reconstuct this bidge. During the processing of the find situation of Bridge No. 1 foru "key questions" regarding reconstruction have been formulated. Our resulting statement says that in the fiven circumstances we cannot exclude the existence of a number of substantial reconstructions of the bridge, or rather the existence of more bridges constucted over time in the same place. Because only the load-bearing parts of the bridge´s construction have been preserved, we know almost nothing about the part above water level. Here we can be inspored especially by mediaeval and modern era bridges in period representations or by bridges of similar constuction that are still standing. There remains the general quetion of the origin of the bridge´s consturction, which has analogies in a nuber of La téne and Roman localities in Western Europe. A possible explanation is that the Classical tradition of engineering may have been mediated by the provinces in the Danube region., Lumír Poláček, Gerard Wilke., and Obsahuje seznam literatury
The author presents the preliminary results of the excavation of the Mikulčice acropolis fortifi cation near Church II. Any rampart is the largest such structure built by the Mojmír dynasty. The importance of this particular fortifi cation lies in the fact that it is the rampart of the main area of one of the top Great Moravian centers of power that protected, among other things, a number of religious buildings and a district with the only properly documented stone palace of a Great Moravian ruler. Great Moravian rampart is composed of a stone face wall, clay-wood core strengthened by grates and a stone substructure ringed by stake palisades, in front of, and in some places partially under, the face wall. The substructure’s role was most likely to bear the face wall’s weight and to strengthen the artifi cial slope under it against water erosion by the nearby river. The conclusion poses the main issues and unknowns that remain to be discovered and answered about the Mikulčice fortifi cation, Marian Mazuch., and Obsahuje seznam literatury
The Institute of Archaeology of Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Brno organized in the days of 24.- 25.9.2012 in the town of Hodonín a colloquium "Usus aquarum - Water and Water Structures in the LIfe of the Early Middle Ages Societies of the Central Europe" within the conference series "Internationale Tagungen in Mikulčice". Since the deditors obtained for the planned proceedings of papers in the 10. volume of publication series "Internationale Tagungen in Mikulčice" only 5 papers, these papers were relocated into the journal Synopsis of researches and published here in the block following this introduciton. This is a brief report on the colloquium - its course, aim, programme, etc., Lumír Poláček., and Obsahuje seznam literatury