In practice, students discovered four graves from the period of Great Moravia in the Břeclav region

“These are graves from the 9th century. One of the graves is interesting in that it is located in a settlement pit. The place was first used in everyday life, then it was used as a place of burial,” said Přichystalová.

The finding and examination of graves is the result of a four-week survey in which students completed their compulsory internship. Archaeologists have examined six unexplored squares of the area, each measuring five times five meters. The place is located in the northeastern part of the fortified settlement of Pohansko.

“So far we estimate that it was two men and two women, but that’s exactly what anthropologists will say. They were buried in rectangular pits, but there was nothing in their graves. We found over a hundred similar graves in the area. Interestingly, they were not part of the cemetery. at churches, “said Petr Dresler.

Why the dead were outside the burial ground is a mystery

It is not yet clear why some inhabitants of the Great Moravian fortified settlement were buried outside the cemetery near the churches. The current theory of archaeologists assumes that they were either non-free people or people who were not Christians. However, concrete evidence is still lacking.

Simultaneously with the survey of the north-eastern part, archaeologists conducted a survey at the site of last year’s research. There they came across an object that probably served as a well in the past. However, due to the high groundwater level, they could not examine it in more detail. If the water drops, it will return to finding in the fall or next season.

University scientists have been searching the place since 1958. It gained a lot of attention shortly after the beginning of the work, when a Great Moravian church and a number of graves with rich finds of jewelery, precious metals, swords and spurs were discovered here. Experts gradually discovered the noble court here, and in 2007, for example, they discovered a second church and graves around it with objects that are evidence of the existence of the Christian faith.

Of interest is the grave of a man buried in the rotunda, which is one of the oldest Christian shrines in the Czech Republic.

Pohansko, together with the Valy fortified settlement in Mikulčice near Hodonín, the Old Town near Uherské Hradiště and the St. Hyppolite fortified settlement in Znojmo, belonged to the most important centers of Great Moravia.

–