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
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