Building materials and construction techniques in early mediaeval Bohemia: case study of the St. Peter and Paul rotunda at Budeč

0575588 - ARÚ 2024 GB eng A - Abstract
Tomanová, Pavla - Válek, Jan - Kotková, Kristýna - Kozlovcev, Petr
Building materials and construction techniques in early mediaeval Bohemia: case study of the St. Peter and Paul rotunda at Budeč.
29th EAA Annual Meeting (Belfast, Northern Ireland 2023). Abstract book. Belfast: European Association of Archaeologists, 2023 - (Karabáš, M.; Kleinová, K.). s. 350. ISBN 978-80-88441-05-2.
[Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists /29./. 30.08.2023-02.09.2023, Belfast]
Institutional support: RVO:67985912 ; RVO:68378297
Keywords : Early Middle Ages * church archaeology * construction history * mortar analyses * building materials * radiocarbon dating
OECD category: Archaeology
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/repository/preview.php?id=17539

The St. Peter and Paul Rotunda at Budeč, built in the late 9th or early 10th century, is the oldest fully preserved masonry construction in Bohemia (Czech Republic). Due to its high state of preservation and references to its erection in early medieval legends, the church became a locus of historical memory. Its local significance made the church the focus of conservation efforts from the 19th century, as well as the subject of architectural, historical, and archaeological research. The findings allow the reconstruction of the historical framework and the macro-definition of the building materials used, which exemplify early masonry construction in the central European region. Recently, we began to investigate the mortars used. We have analysed their composition, technical quality of the materials used for in their production, and the possibilities of determining their chronology by radiocarbon dating. The aim of this paper is to present the rotunda at Budeč as an example of early construction development in Bohemia and the approach to monumental conservation in the 19th and 20th centuries, summarise the results of past research and present the results of the latest mortar analyses, especially radiocarbon dating of historical mortars extracted from individual construction phases of the church.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0345360