Ivo Stefan

15. září 921 měla být na svém dvorci na hradišti Tetín zavražděna kněžna Ludmila, zbožná vdova po prvním historickém Přemyslovci Bořivojovi, budoucí světice a patronka Čech. ulatá výročí obvykle na chvíli dělají z historických postav celebrity a od odborníků na čtení minulosti se očekává prezentace národních hrdinů a hrdinek v novém světle. Kromě jiného se tak letos "svatá bába" Ludmila, v jedné z oficiálně nejateističtějších zemí světa, dočkala už dvou objemných sborníkových svazků, hodnotících všemožné aspekty jejího reálného i světeckého života. Srovnání se staršími historickými pracemi nás jen ubezpečí v tom, že k její děravé biografii se už asi sotva podaří přispět něčím zcela novým. V intenzivním pohybu je ale poznávání a interpretace

During the reign of Charlemagne, East Central and Eastern Europe were populated by dozens of small-scale, “pagan” societies organized on the basis of fragile tribal or clan bonds. Two centuries later, around 1000, the picture changed completely. Now, the region was divided among several kingdoms with Christian rulers and with their own dioceses and rudiments of ecclesiastical organization. Throughout the region, political centralization went hand in hand with Christianization, with one process accelerating the other. However, both processes were predicated upon intensive and varied interactions that have taken place during the 9th and 10th centuries between local elites, on the one hand, and the Frankish or Byzantine Empire, on the other hand. While Bohemia, Poland and Hungary entered the Frankish geopolitical sphere and through the decision of their respective rulers subsequently became part of Latin Christianity, Rus’ adopted Christianity from Byzantium and transformed its liturgy and culture. All those polities, however, maintained at least some contact with both Western and Eastern Christianity.

This study analyses the phenomenon of people without legal personality in early medieval central Europe from two perspectives. The first is focused on the importance of unfree labour in the context of local economic systems, the second on the long-distance slave trade. While according to written sources from the eleventh and twelfth centuries the unfree played a key role in the economy of the rulers and ecclesiastical institutions, the author argues that the role of the international slave markets has been overestimated in recent studies. Slavery, unfortunately, usually does not have specific correlates in the archaeological record and cannot be studied without textual evidence.

The bipartite stronghold in Prague-Královice is part of a group of large, multipartite early medieval strongholds in central Bohemia. The fact that the stronghold is located a mere 17 km to the southeast of Prague Castle raises the question of whether it served as an important strategic point controlling access to the Prague basin from the east. However, due to its antiquated dating to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the stronghold has remained until now on the periphery of archaeological interest. Several archaeological activities conducted at the site over the past four years have dated the construction of the stronghold to the period of the first Přemyslids. The text presents the results of the outer fortification excavation. The relatively precise dating of its founding is supported by a dendrochronological date acquired from the wooden frame of the rampart. In the final part of the paper an attempt is made to place the stronghold in a historical
context, and the authors speculate on the socioeconomic implications of the transport of enormous amounts of stone for the construction of the front screen wall from a distance of at least 9.5 km.

This text represents a critical response to Jiří Macháček’s article, in which the neo-evolutionary concept of chiefdom in the ninth
and early tenth centuries is applied to Moravia. The author of this paper attempts to reconstruct individual areas of the socioeconomic life of Great Moravia (social structure, economy, ideology and religion) using written and, primarily, archaeological sources. The text documents that while this polity did demonstrate
certain signs of instability, it also featured organisationally demanding elements (vast settlement agglomerations in particular), which testify to its significant complexity in the context of Europe in this particular period. A number of strategies for political integration clearly existed in early medieval Europe,
and the author therefore believes that the application of set ‘development stages’ hampers rather than fosters an understanding of the period.

S-shaped rings appear in the Western Slavonic milieu and the Carpathian Basin in the course of the tenth century. Over the next two hundred years, this simple women’s jewellery is the most frequent and sometimes even the only artefact found in period burial grounds. The study submitted focuses on the territory of Bohemia and Moravia. On the bases of a synopsis of the available dating supports, the first part offers a current idea of the origin and development of the jewellery. The subsequent section is devoted to the question of to what extent the uneven distribution of s-shaped-rings is exploitable for the reconstruction of property-legal differences in early medieval society. By means of a statistical analysis, the author shows that the form of grave furnishing was significantly determined by the age of the deceased and that we do not record differences between the necropolises connected with various social groups. It can thus be justifiably assumed that the socially representative function of grave furnishings entirely shrank into the background beginning with the second half of the tenth century.

The collapse of the polity which Byzantine Emperor Constantine
VII Porphyrogennetos called ‘megale Moravia’
is undoubtedly one of the most noteworthy problems of
Central European history of the Early Middle Ages i.a.
also because it has no equivalent wide and far. How is it
possible that the still recently prospering society could entirely
disintegrate in a short timeframe? Through a structural
analysis of the Great Moravian polity, the author
attempts to show that the collapse at the beginning of the
tenth century was closely tied to its fragile socioeconomic
foundations and endeavours to offer an explanation for
the subsequent resignation on the renewal of the ‘Great
Moravian project’ as well. At the end, the study asks the
question of what level of complexity Great Moravia actually
attained, to what extent its structure built on foreign
models and what legacy it left in Central Europe.

The study offers a comprehensive evaluation of the systematic archaeological research at the Na Týnici site in close proximity to the
Budeč fortified settlement (district of Kladno), one of the main strongholds of the early Přemyslid dynasty. Systematically studied
between 1983 and 1988, the site is interesting above all due to the discovery of a mass grave holding 33-60 individuals. This mass
grave dates to the 10th century and is probably the most extensive evidence of organized Early Medieval violence in Europe. The
mass grave is surrounded by relatively large burial grounds with numerous distinctive characteristics; both the mass grave and the
burial grounds were preceded by a smaller Early Medieval settlement. The study aims to make previously unpublished sources
available to the greatest extent and also attempts, in various ways, to incorporate the mass grave and the adjacent necropolises
into the social and historical context of the nascent Bohemian state. The xylotomic analysis of the remains of wood from graves
structures and the analysis of cinders found in the context of the Early Medieval settlement contribute to the reconstruction of the
surrounding landscape at the time of the creation of the Budeč fortified settlement.

One of the first moments of this “homogenisation of European
standards”, associated with the rise of states and adoption of Christianity, was the abandonment of
cremation. Other signs (burial near a church structure, disappearance of the custom of placing objects
in the grave, etc.) often did not appear until some time later. However, the use of cremation differed
among the regions which practiced this form of treating the dead body. his work does not aim to be an exhaustive analysis of the issue for all of Europe, but rather
a loose collection of selected case studies. The objective is to capture the basic range of variations
in the causes of (and forms taken by) the change in burial rites.