Abstract
This contribution focuses on fortified centres in the region of Central Bohemia, where one of the greatest concentrations of large fortified complexes in early medieval Europe as a whole has been registered in a time horizon stretching possibly already from the second half of the 8th century to the second half of the 11th century. The reconstruction of the borders of political units generally is not one of the strong points of archaeology.
Today's knowledge, based above all on archaeological findings and possibly their confrontation with written sources, enable us to reconstruct three main horizons of the construction of strongholds in Central Bohemia, the earliest of them lacks any support in written sources, and it is therefore impossible to decide whether they functioned as centres of small independent regions, or were already subordinated to a single authority. However, even in the case of the later layer of hillforts built by the Přemyslids, the assertion of the central power might have been more complex than we thought before.
In the last part of the study, we briefly discuss the archaeological image of the functions of the strongholds, focusing on the issue of their functional differentiation and on the crucial questions concerning the mechanism of their construction and settlement.