Projects of the Slovak Research and Development Agency (APVV)
Registration number: APVV – 21-0257
Project duration:01.07.2022 – 30.06.2026
Project title: Roman Period Elites of the Suebi People in the Central Europe
Responsible person: prof. doc. PhDr. Eduard Droberjar, Ph.D.
Abstract: The basic idea of the project is to provide a balanced account of the contribution of domestic tradition, external contacts and movements to the formation of social elites and their manifestations during the Roman period. The geographical framework for the study of Germanic elites is defined by Central Europe, i.e. the territory of the Polabian Germanics (Suebi), i.e. south-western Slovakia, Bohemia and Moravia. The basic starting point of the project is the numerous source material with high narrative value, collected as a result of intensive field archaeological research in the area of interest.
Registration number: APVV-20-0044
Project duration: 1. 07. 2021 – 30. 06. 2025
Project title: Influence of the exploitation of natural resources on ways of life in the Bronze Age and Iron Age
Responsible person: Mgr. Lucia Benediková, PhD.
Coordinator: Institute of Archaeology of Slovak Academy of Science
Natural resources and their availability have always been being a key presumption of existence for human society. Availability of diverse resources, ability to exploit them or control access to them preconditioned or even determined the selection of sites for settling, level of development and life standard of individual communities. Studying the relation of human societies to natural resources and their background is an important part of archaeological investigation and its sub-discipline, the so-called economic archaeology. Implementation of archaeometric methods guarantees interdisciplinary approach and higher objectivity of obtained results. In the project, the relation of the human societies to the natural resources will be studied, as well as the impact of this relation to the way of life in the Bronze and Iron Ages in the territory of contemporary Slovakia. It will be based on processing and evaluation of materials from settlement sites with various functions and various exploited natural resources: organic (plant and animal) as well as anorganic ones (in the project, with special focus on clay, copper/bronze and iron). Employment of archaeometric methods by investigating the individual types of sources (metal and pottery artifacts, archaeobotanical and archaeozoological material) and interdisciplinary approach to them will ensure the objectivity of obtained results. At selected sites with documented specialized metallurgic production, interdisciplinary field research connected with the investigation of their background will be carried out. The expected outcomes include a reconstruction of strategies in detection and exploitation of natural resources and testing and/or defining new methodologies for investigation of prehistoric and protohistoric metallurgic centres in mountainous environment.
Registration number: APVV-20-0521
Project duration: 1. 07. 2021 – 30. 06. 2025
Project title: Importance of obsidian sources in Slovakia in the Neolithic and Eneolithic period
Responsible person: PhDr. Ivan Cheben, CSc.
Coordinator: Institute of Archaeology of Slovak Academy of Science
The issue of the chipped industrie of the Stone Age was dealt with in Slovakia, especially for the Neolithic period and eneolite, rather marginally. Only some larger finding files have been evaluated. It is only in recent years that research into this issue has been more intensively developed. For the study of split industry, modern analyses are applied which can affect the stages of production processes from the acquisition of raw material from primary or secondary sources, through their initial processing, distribution to final use. The evaluation of the questions set is based on a comprehensive analysis of obsidian artifacts. The project is aimed at a comprehensive evaluation of obsidian split industry, as well as the findings from the Paleolithion period to the earlier Bronze Age from the territory of Slovakia, including the sources of obsidian, the primary occurrence of which is situated in the south-eastern part of the country. The issues addressed are closely related to obsidian research – it is about capturing processes such as importing a given raw material into a housing estate, transforming it and determining the artifact that was the target of its production. They form the basis for an overall theoretical evaluation of the observed issue.
Registration number: APVV-19-0563
Project duration: 1. 07. 2020 – 30. 06. 2024
Project title: Mocenské centrá a ich zázemie v 8.-11. storočí
Responsible person: doc. PhDr. Matej Ruttkay, CSc.
Coordinator: Institute of Archaeology of Slovak Academy of Science
Registration number: APVV-18-0276
Project duration: 1. 7. 2019 – 30. 6. 2023
Project title: The environment and settlement networks of late Prehistory on the example of selected periods and regions of Slovakia
Responsible person: Mgr. Róbert Malček, PhD.
Coordinator: Institute of Archaeology of Slovak Academy of Science
The objective of the project is monitoring of adaptation strategies of prehistoric populations in selected regions of West, Central and East Slovakia from the old Neolithic to the young/late Bronze Age, their comparison and scientific synthesis of the obtained information. The project focuses on the assessment of the settlement structure and its metamorphoses. The selected areas should show natural and social diversity which is, according to previous opinions, often expressed in dichotomy of cultural development of the Tisza river basin and the Podunajská nížina lowland. Ruptures should be accompanied by cultural changes in individual regions (extinction and origin of archaeological cultures and, besides others, beginnings of various historical epochs). In the project, these ideas will be confronted with the result of the analysis of the collected data assessed in the regional as well as supra-regional context; their validity will thus be verified on the given “sample” and conclusions regarding their similarity or difference in social structures within studied populations and their adaptation strategies will be postulated. Processing of the find fund from selected sites in the studied territory and eras will be a complementary task; this task follows from the necessity to specify our knowledge of material cultures of the given societies and will include the most complex processing of find funds from investigations in selected sites from the studied eras as well as the mobiliary obtained by terrain prospecting during the projectworks using modern analytical methods on interdisciplinary basis (anthropology, archaeobotany, 14C analyses.