The early medieval site of Roztoky: a puzzle in the Vltava Valley, Bohemia

0562895 - ARÚ 2023 RIV AT eng J - Journal Article
Kuna, Martin
The early medieval site of Roztoky: a puzzle in the Vltava Valley, Bohemia.
Beiträge zur Mittelalterarchäologie in Österreich. Roč. 38, č. 2022 (2022), s. 107-119. ISSN 1011-0062
Research Infrastructure: AIS CR II - 90134
Institutional support: RVO:67985912
Keywords : Early Middle Ages * Prague-Korchak culture * Bohemia * settlement agglomeration * pit house
OECD category: Archaeology
Method of publishing: Limited access
https://www.oegm.or.at/publikationen/bmoe/bmoe-38-2022.html

The early medieval settlement in Roztoky in Bohemia is an exceptional case among the sites of the Prague-type culture (henceforth PTC). It does not differ from other sites of the same period in Czechia and Central Europe in terms of the features found, however, but rather in their extraordinary number, mainly consisting of hundreds of typical PTC sunken houses. A remarkable feature of the site is also its landscape setting confined to a narrow strip of land on the bottom of a relatively deep valley of the Vltava river. Part of the site, at the point where the valley widens, has been continuously inhabited throughout prehistory, but the highest concentration of PTC features occurs in another part of the site, a relatively detached corner of the gorge, less accessible in terms of communication and (therefore) mostly uninhabited in other periods. The PTC settlement was first discovered by rescue excavation in 1980–1983 and subsequently investigated by further fieldworks up to 2010. So far, the processing of the finds has led to the publication of extensive reference sets of artefacts and ecofacts, but a clear answer to the question of what caused such a large concentration of population in the given place is still being sought.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0335099