The Western Slavs of the Seventh to the Eleventh Century - An Archaeological Perspective
Sebastian Brather
‘Slavic archaeology’ has in recent years overcome the traditional ‘ethnic paradigm’ that had dominated culture-historical archaeology for decades. The second main step forward been application of dendrochronology or tree-ring-dating, which shows on basis archaeological record political development ran much faster sometimes than previously thought. And a third improvement is important – to realize East Central Europe did share fundamental cultural characteristics, but was far from being homogenous zone. Political developments, economic exchange and influences caused many regional chronological differences. Complex interdependencies e.g. between hillfort layout, ceramic technology supra-regional power have now become visible. paper summarizes current state research: economy agriculture landscape production exchange, settlement houses hamlets hillforts their central functions, society history politics representation identities.
History Compass