Slav Epic - Alfonz Mucha

by James Gogarty

photos by Matthieu Grattier

Perhaps, following the river south into lands inhabited by Germanic tribes, they curiously decided to settle below the rich forests and fertile meadows and on a flood plain along the Vltava where the town of Roztoky u Prahy now lies. Establishing a settlement much larger than any other of its kind, they would remain on this site for about 150 years. Perhaps they were soldiers, merchants, or a ford-controlling community. It remains a mystery. What is certain is that these pioneering Slavs migrated from as far as Ukraine and settled in Bohemia, only to be lost under meters of earth for nearly 1,500 years. 

In mid-July, as the County of Central Bohemia began construction of a new road connecting Prague to Roztoky , the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences gained permission to inspect the area. “Due to all the administrative bureaucracy it took longer than expected,” complains PhDr. Martin Kuna, CSc. , head of the excavation team. Having  predicted that there might be a settlement in the area, after finding other Slavic houses nearby in the 1980s during work associated with the electrification of the railway, the institute was eager to get started. Researchers were not disappointed. After months of carefully excavating the kilometer-long stretch along the river, the archaeologists uncovered more than 270 houses with a potential 300 more, making this the largest settlement ever found in Central Europe. 

“What makes this phenomenal,” exclaims PhDr. Naďa Profantová, CSc ., the other lead archaeologist, as she takes me around the dig, “is the fact that Slavic villages at this time usually only consisted of five to 10 houses, maximum.” Looking down the brown expanse at all the excavated houses, one can’t help feel the enormity of this find. Every couple of meters, a square depression has been dug outlining the shape of the typical Slavic semi-sunken house. They are incredibly small, most no larger than 6 square meters. “We recognize three archaeological phases from the superposition of houses,” Profantová explains. This means that they have discovered generations of houses on top each other, since these constructions lasted for just 25 to 30 years on average. Many still have the remnants of stone ovens in their northwest corners, another identifying factor of this culture. A few are in such good condition that it is still possible to cook with them. Although the settlement was extraordinarily large, only various small artifacts were found such as pottery, spindle-whorls, glass beads, antler combs, an iron buckle, knives, bronze decorations, etc. “Their relative low number,” Kuna postulates, “may be explained by one, a low number of items were made of durable materials [a relatively high proportion of items made of wood, etc.], and, two, the fact that most of the houses were abandoned in peace and no catastrophic event [fire, flood, war] took place on the site. Hence, all valuable things were usually taken away.” No human remains were found, further indicating that these were of a certain Slavic culture connected with so-called Prague-type culture of the sixth and seventh centuries, since these populations practiced cremation.

The discovery will surely change views of early Slavic history. Most historians place the arrival of Slavic tribes to Bohemia around 550 or 560 AD, but recent archaeological finds of Germanic (Gothic) burial grounds, the closest not 3 kilometers from Roztoky, in Podbaba, have revealed chronicles suggesting the Slavs arrived earlier, around 530. Could they have been talking about the settlers at the new site? The Institute will be examining this closely. The size alone warrants many theories. “It is obvious it had an important central function in the region,” Profantová claims, “whether as a trading or a cultural center or the seat of the elite, that is to be determined.”

The well-known historian Dušan Třeštík stated on Czech Television that this settlement must have been military due to its size, organization and the fact that its inhabitants left so abruptly. “Not a single artifact found supports this hypothesis,” Kuna contends. “On the contrary, we don’t yet have a better answer-the site of Roztoky is a puzzle which can only be solved by analyzing the recent finds. But such a solution will not be found fast or simply.” 

As the winter sets in, the Roztoky archaeological excavation will draw to a close and eventually be filled in and covered over by the new road. Lost, but only to the eye, as the institute will continue to study all the clues and artifacts gathered to ultimately reveal their findings to the modern descendants of these early Slavs and the world as a whole.

Average user rating

   (0 vote)