No abstract

In 2018, during a rescue archaeological excavation taking place in one of the gardens of Staré Město near Uherské Hradiště, 23 early medieval graves containing skeletal remains of 26 individuals were detected. The site is situated on the northern border of the well-known Great Moravian burial ground ‘Na Valách’. In a large number of the newly excavated graves, greater or lesser deviations from the usual funeral rite were recorded. While the established burial rite in Great Moravian society means the deceased lies on their back in the supine position with extended extremities and head towards the west, here we found skeletons in very different orientations, lying in a prone or crouched position, or, at least, with unusual positions of their upper or lower limbs. Additionally, some of the graves contained incomplete or no skeletons. There is also one double burial and a triple burial, and several graves in superpositions. In nine graves, objects of material culture were found, the most important of them come from the rider’s grave 20/2018. The presented study aims to interpret the burial contexts using the bioarchaeological approach, which is, however, affected by the quality of the preserved finds, especially skeletal remains.

For a long time, the issue of early medieval hillforts attracts the great attention of both researchers and the lay public. The paper discusses questions related to the determination of the lifespan and functionality of wood-soil fortifications of early medieval hillforts. the paper builds on our experiences gained during nearly twenty years of observations at the archaeological open-air museum in Modrá near Velehrad in Moravia, Czech Republic. We compare our findings with other archaeological open-air museums and research concerning fortifications. The paper presents older as well as the most recent reconstructions of fortifications built in Modrá between the years 2020 and 2021. Those constructions are then compared with similar fortifications recently reconstructed on the Bojná-Valy hillfort near Topoľčany in Western Slovakia. Finally, we briefly discuss several questions concerning hillforts and their fortifications in the Great moravian times (9 th c.).