Abstract
This text represents a critical response to Jiří Macháček's article, in which the neo-evolutionary concept of chiefdom in the ninth and early tenth centuries is applied to Moravia. The author of this paper attempts to reconstruct individual areas of the socioeconomic life of Great Moravia (social structure, economy, ideology and religion) using written and, primarily, archaeological sources.
The text documents that while this polity did demonstrate certain signs of instability, it also featured organisationally demanding elements (vast settlement agglomerations in particular), which testify to its significant complexity in the context of Europe in this particular period. A number of strategies for political integration clearly existed in early medieval Europe, and the author therefore believes that the