Syllabus
1. What the term social structure means - basic terms and methods, social-historic interpretation of archaeological sources, significance of written sources.
2. Graves and burial places and their significance for understanding of social structure of inhabitants - signs, methods a their testimonial possibility
3. Social structure of protohistorical burial places (Latten, Roman and migration of nations period, early Slavonic period)
4. Early mediaeval cemeteries in Western Europe: Frankish Empire
5. Early mediaeval cemeteries in Northern Europe: Viking region
6. Early mediaeval cemeteries in the Central-Eastern Europe: Bohemia
7. Early mediaeval cemeteries in the Central-Eastern Europe: Moravia
8. Early mediaeval cemeteries in the Central-Eastern Europe: Slovakia, Hungary, Austria
9. Slavonic-Avarian cemeteries of the 7-8th century
10. Great Moravian's cemeteries in the 9th century
11. Social-historical interpretation of anthropological data
12. "Dukes graves"
Annotation
The aim of these lectures is to make students aquatinted with the evidence of archaeological sources to the social structure of historical populations. In the centre of attention are burial places and graves.
Their understanding gives us the most complete picture of the social structure. After opening lessons, aimed on methodic and problems in general we intent on the survey of burial evolution from the first historically known civilizations - the Celtics, Germans, partly even Romans.
Early mediaeval cemeteries with their beginnings in the 6th century are introduced both in chronological and geographical order, including Merovingian's and Carolingian's cemetery as well as graves from Viking region. In the centre of our attention is central-east Europe with Great Moravia as the first state formation of Slavs.
Special excurse is devoted to the problematic of "dukes" or let us say dynastic graves from protohistoric and early mediaeval period.