Some recent archaeological landscape projects in Czechoslovakia have found a theoretical background within the concept of ’community areas‘. According to this concept prehistoric populations are approached as divided into communities. Each community is supposed to have shared a common territory within which most of its activities were concentrated. The community area consisted of several sub-areas (e.g. habitation areas, specific production areas, funerary areas, etc.) where activities different in function were performed (Neustupny 1986; 1991). The theory of community areas is not, however, limited to the identification of community areas themselves. It is rather a general approach, based on presumption and identification of patterns or structures underlying the archaeological record and reflecting structured human behaviour in the past. Using some concepts of the community area theory, this paper aims at analysing prehistoric habitation areas in the territory of Bohemia and articulating some general hypotheses concerning settlement processes and structures on various levels of complexity.

The results of extensive investigations in Slovakia have shed considerable light on the problems of the emergence, development and cultural and chronological interconnections of the Neolithic Lengyel culture. This includes the economy and social structure of its bearers.

Typological methods make it easy to demonstrate a local origin for the Lengyel culture, defining clearly its innovative component which was introduced from the south, from the sphere of the Vinča culture (Vinča B2/C1), then in the process of transformation, carried to the territory of the nascent Lengyel culture by the Sopot culture (S. Dimitrijevič 1968; Pavúk 1981a; Kalicz 1988). The Lengyel culture emerged on the base of the Želiezovce cultural group which gave birth to the earliest stage of the former culture – Proto-Lengyel – under impulses from and with participation of the Sopot culture. Such a fusion of local and foreign elements may well be demonstrated in pottery, especially in the development of its shapes and decoration. This process is accompanied by a major paradox: continuous development of pottery is contradicted by the discontinuity in settlement sites. Not a single site excavated either in Slovakia or in Hungary has yielded a settlement with material both from the last stage of the Želiezovce group and from the early stages of the Lengyel culture (the Bíňa-Bicske group, Lužianky, Lengyel I) which could constitute evidence for local evolution.

The Carpathian Basin and its chronology

The Carpathian Basin (FIGURE 1), irrespective of its peripheral parts, was divided in the Hallstatt period into two major cultural–geographical units, with the river Danube forming the border line. Significant changes occurred in the whole region at the beginning of the 6th century BC. The development of local groups, reaching a climax about the turn of the 7th and 6th centuries BC, was interrupted. In the broader East Alpine region this break is documented by the desertion of the majority of fortified and open settlements, and is marked by the end of burials under barrows and in flat cemeteries (Romsauer in press; Teržan 1990: 120–21). Approximately in the same period objects of Scythian origin come into use in the Great Hungarian Plain, and the Vekerzug group formed with its specific manifestations in material culture, settlement pattern and burial rite. Its traces are distributed practically all over the Plain and reach southwestern Slovakia. The earliest finds are dated to the mid 6th century BC – about 560 BC (Párducz 1974: 330; Dusek 1974: 405). The independent development of the Vekerzug group was terminated by historical Celtic expansion at the beginning of the La Tène B2 phase, dated, in general, to the mid 4th century BC (Bujna 1982: 377f., 397f.). During its 200 years of existence, the Vekerzug group acted as an important cultural link between the regions within the reach of the expanding Classical world.

The chronological sequence of the latest phases of prehistory in Central Europe is a critical question, concerning the relationship between the Hallstatt and La Téne periods, and their regional variants. My aim in this article is to draw attention to one source of chronological evidence, the pronounced Late Hallstatt pottery form which is represented by the bowl with curved neck and sharply carinateded belly, the ‘Knickwandschale’. The genesis of this form may be looked for in cups of the Middle Hallstatt period (Hallstatt C2–D1), and its final development in the Early La Téne period (La Téne A–Bl). Its long tradition and morphological development, together with its extraordinarily broad geographical distribution, make it one of the leading types for relative chronological periodization of the Late Hallstatt and Early La Téne periods as well as for the synchronization of cultural development in central Europe (FIGURE 1).

The problem of identification of the earliest Slavic settlement in central Europe drew researchers’ attention to the archaeological finds of the Late Roman and Migration periods. The simple hand-made pottery of this period in the northern Danube region showed a certain formal resemblance to the vessels of Early Slavic cultures, which provoked the idea of a direct time connection between the first wave of the Slav expansion from the east and the horizon of the preceding Germanic settlement in this territory. A find group from northeast Slovakia, known mainly from the small settlement at Presov (Chropovský 1962; Točík 1965; Chropovský & Ruttkay 1985), the ’Prešov‘ type, seemed to provide the geographical connection of this ethnic shift. However, different opinions were also expressed, pointing to a possible relationship with the Late Przeworsk culture milieu (Budinský-Krička 1963: 36–7), or connecting the genesis of the Prešov finds with the development of local settlement of the Later Roman period (Lamiová-Schmiedlová 1969: 478; Kolník 1980: 202). Investigations in the North Carpathian area has provided new evidence during the last few years enabling a first evaluation of its settlement.

This paper is a summary of a more extensive study (Meduna & Černá in press), subsuming the results of investigations of settlement structure of the early Middle Ages in northwest Bohemia.

This contribution intends to present, very briefly, one of the facets of medieval archaeology in Bohemia, a land which to this day bears the marks of having belonged to ‘the other Europe’. I will focus on a short phase of Bohemian history and within it, I will take out just a small portion that is accessible via the archaeological evidence. In spite of all the material limitations, I want to show that in this theme Bohemian archaeology documents one of the components of the gradual emergence of Europe, a continent so varied and yet so internally coherent.