Abstract
During a rescue excavation of the area of family houses and "Park" in the site of Olomouc-Slavonín, Arbesova Street, track Záhrady, a total of 13 skeleton graves of the Corded Ware culture and the Early Bronze Age were uncovered in the immediate surroundings and within a large burnt burial place of the Urnfield period. The site can be found near the south-western border of the Olomouc territory on the right bank of the river Morava above Nemilanka brook and an unnamed watercourse, being a long gentle slope facing the east at 214-219 m above sea level.
It is located in sight from two agglomerations of the same dating (site Olomouc-Slavonín, Horní lán and Olomouc-Povel, Janského Street). The Corded Ware culture large-sized graves contain the typical marked dark infill at considerable distances from each other (7-59 m) so it is presumed there originally were mound banks piled up there.
They used to form a nearly regular line of 230 m in length. Two of them (H7, 242) are noteworthy for their inner construction in the form of four lengthwise grooves at the bottom; these are interpreted as grooves for wheels of a ceremonial vehicle made entirely of wood on which the dead was lying.
This extraordinary phenomenon from approximately the same period can be found far in the eastern part of Europe, in the north of the Black Sea Region and the Caucasus Mountains (Yamnaya, Budjak, Catacomb cultures). Adhering to the sex-differentiated funeral ceremonies, the graves provided a collection (of 30 vessels) of the typical local corded ware, a relatively high number of chipped industry, two polished battleaxes and two axes, a bone chisel, pairs of arsenical copper coiling/spiral lock rings/hair ornaments, dating them back to the early and middle period of the local development of MCWC (Illa-IIIb) with non-linear continuity in burying.
A later component is four skeleton graves of the Early Bronze period (superposition H 7 and 10 with an older Corded Ware culture burial) of slightly smaller (narrower) pits close to each other of epi-Corded funeral ceremony (different ways of burying of men and women), showing even a mixed character of the Nitra and Únětice cultures inventory). The first one is related to the above-mentioned funeral ceremony, a bent-walled bowl "planter", several siliceous arrowheads (H 10) and a simple hair jewel with a hammered plate.
A shaped bowl and a tassel-decorated cup with a secondarily adjusted rim, a needle, spiral tubes and maybe double-wire hair ornaments with backward loops rank among the Únětice culture. The origin of a flat engraved triangular dagger cannot be stated unquestionably.
The origin of the metal can be found in sulfidic ores; however, more details are not known. Based on a small series of absolute chronology data, it can be stated that the burial activities had to take place between 2150-2000 BC, i.e. several hundreds of years later than in the case of the Corded Ware culture.