The possibility of studying prehistoric roads based on sources about horses in the Bronze and Iron Age
Abstract
Moravia is one of the regions which, due to its geographical position at the eastern edge of the Carpathian Basin, which is the eastern edge of the steppe zone stretching from China to Hungary, played a role of "contact or buffer zone" between autochthonous settlers and alochtons nomadic or semi-settled cultures in prehistoric and historical periods. With "iron regularity" along this axis from the east along the Silk road, an ethnic group whose life philosophy was a life adapted to the horse's back (in the past: Mongolians, Hungarians, Avars, Huns, Sarmatas, Scythians, Kimmerians) migrated.
While the Carpathian Basin (especially Hungary, Romania or southern Slovakia) regularly became their home, the areas on the edge of their settlements were affected by the new cultural patterns and the autochthons took only part of their different culture. Moravia, with its location at the crossroads of the Amber and Pannon-Elbe Trails, is thus a region of crossing two civilization boundaries.
The cultural legacy of the migrant or semi-ethnic ethnic groups was reflected in the material sources mainly in the issue of finds with horses, where they are left here or influenced by local production and use. The present paper monitors all archaeological sources with the theme of horses from the Bronze Age to the end of the Iron Age.
The author then confronts the collected data in cooperation with Jan Martínek and connects it with the theme of prehistoric roads, on which the transport on wagons and horseback depended closely.