Abstrakt
An assemblage of bronze artefacts and amber beads was found at a site disturbed by ploughing in the cadastral territory of Stíčany in the district of Chrudim on 8. February 2014, a find that significantly alters our previous notion of the level of knowledge achieved in connection with the research of the Hallstatt period in Bohemia.
Experience to date suggested that the relevant source base had already been developer to such an extent that it was possible to reliably determine the individual local cultural entities not only in terms of territory but also on the basis of their materiál content, and that a detailed relative chronology was available for the simple classification of finds. While newly acquired finds typically confirmed this idea, the Hallstatt hoard to schich this article is devoted clearly disrupts it.
This is, after all, the first truly unquestionable hoard from the Hallstatt period in the Bohemia. At first glance, this assembůage is unique not only for its solitary character and because its composition significantly changes the current idea of artefactual composition in the Czech Silesian-Platěnice culture of the Hallstatt period, but mainly because it brings new knowledge of cultural ties on which we previously lacked precise information.
Among other contributions, this creates space for new interpretaions of the functioning of society at the transition from the late to final Hallsttt period and about intercultural relations at this time in broader central Europe. During the Hallstat period, decortative artefacts whose production was based on the cold forming of bronze sheet metal began to spread in some European regions.
Although ring ornament salso appear among them, their production was not large-scale and was probably also territorially limited. In this respect, the assamble from Stíčany is relatively unique, as it contains, with the exception of one bronze část ring and a collction of small bronze sheet metal decorative appliques, another 24 larger bronze artefacts, exclusively whole ring ornamnts or their fragments.
However, solid cast ring ornaments are represented by only one bracelet, whereas six cast hollow bracelets also occur. Five fragments of hollow necklaces featuring fine decoration are wound from the thicker sheet metal, while the remaining nine fragments of ring ornaments of two types in the hjoard are made og thin wrought sheet metal.
It should also be noted that the three amber beads deposited in the Stíčany hoard are simultaneously the only amber artefacts from the environment of the Iron Age Silesian-Platěnicer culture to have been dound in Bohemia. Previous finds of hoards composed of bronze ring ornaments complemented with amber decorative artefacts indicate that their occurence is regionally limited and is associated with the occupation environment formed by a Platěnice culture with its centre in Moravia.
Aside from the hoard Stíčany, similar hoards are for now unknown from other areas. The solitary nature of the Stíčany assemblage is undecored both by the types of deposited bracelets and the assemblage of small bronze sheet metal appliques, which for now have only been dosumented in rare occasions in graves.
As such, this hoard is characterised in many respects by a similar "local inappropriateness", which in the given area is represented to a far grater extent by the enormous collection of find from Býčí skála. The results of typical analyses indicate the predominant use of the bronze artefacts collected that the concentrated artefacts are mostly products of the Hallstatt cultural complec and the find must therefore be linked to one of its cultural zones.
Although Stíčany lies in the territory of todays Bohemia, the find in its character (a hoard with a predominance of bronze ring ornaments and also containing amber beads) lacks any paralles in the Bohemian Hallstatt period find inventory. In the area it was deposited, it is a demonstrably foreign element unrelated to the local cultural environment.
On the contrary, it shows a clear connections to the peripheral zone of the Hallstatt sphere established in central and north Moravia; the closest analogies to certain types of ring ornaments deposited in the Býčí sklála. A noteworthy facts is that both the Stíčany hoard and the Býčí skála assemblage contain artefacts that come from a number of different production centres.
These circumstances make it possible to work with the hypothesis that the Stíčany hoard is in some way connected with processes reflected in the formation of the Býčí skála collection. A typological assessment of the hoard contents permits a dating to the late/final Hallstatt period, specifically to the end of stage Ha D1.
As such, it is the first Hallstat period hoard discovered not only in the east Bohemian region, but also the very first fully documented find of this age in the whole of Bohemia. Due to its composition, this assemblage can be classified among "female" Hallstatt period hoards.
The typological diversity of the assemblage indicates that the concentrated artefacts come from various production centres in the Hallstatt cultural sphere. In accordance with the results of recent research, it can be hypothesised that the hoard was deposited in the context of one of the possible interregional travel routes connecting the north and south of Europe, at the very time we assume that their course shifted from Moravia to the Bohemia.