Collapse of Complex Societies

For many reasons, Czech historiography in the 19th-21st centuries established the main themes and trends in the research of Svätoplukian topics. This article presents the second part of a detailed analysis of the interpretive arc from the glorification of Svätopluk to the reduction of his significance as a ruler, which this Central European school of history underwent in the period under review. The article has been divided into several parts because of its large scope. In the second part I focus primarily on two giants of their time-Lubomír E. Havlík and Dušan Třeštík. Both of them created powerful lines of understanding of the Great Moravian period and the reign of Svätopluk I. Nevertheless, there is an abysmal difference between their approaches to examining the same issue. Havlík looks at it from a Moravian perspective, while Třeštík perceives the same topic from a Czech perspective. For Havlík, the Roman and papal dimensions of Svätopluk are important; for Třeštík, the emphasis is more imperial, although sometimes Central European. For Havlík, Svätopluk is clearly the king of the Moravians, whereas for Třeštík, the same ruler is rather a duke of the East Frankish Empire. It should also be noted that Havlik's image of Svätopluk is complex, while Třeštík'sis rather selective. Paradoxically, however, contemporary Czech historiography tends to build on Třeštík rather than Havlík.

The recent text by J. Macháček (in print) attempts to review the debate concerning the nature of the relationship between Great Moravian centres and their hinterlands. Among other points, it also criticises the model of the Great Moravian market system that I originally developed as part of the wider economic, geographic, and political model of the Great Moravian polity (Hlavica 2023). In the following text, I will analyse Macháček’s key arguments and highlight the problematic conclusions on which he bases his po­sition. Additionally, I will point to the grounding of the author’s criticism in an incomplete understanding of certain economic and anthropological concepts. My primary aim is to demonstrate that his criticism of the Great Moravian market model is insufficient to warrant its rejection.

This dissertation constitutes an archaeological investigation into the site of Pikillacta, a
large colonial center that played a crucial role within the Wari empire during the Middle Horizon
(600-1000 CE) of Peru. This dissertation comprises the results of an excavation project conducted
in 2021 at Pikillacta, focusing on two sectors of the site, Sector B and Sector D. The primary
investigative emphasis was placed on the poorly understood Sector D, consisting of 501 small,
conjoined rooms, the intended function of which remained ambiguous. The central hypothesis
under study posited these structures as residences of individuals occupying low social status inside
Wari society, potentially unfree laborers. The research included excavation units and subsequent
laboratory analyses to clarify the architectural characteristics and associated activities within the
excavated areas, aiming to specifically investigate the conjecture regarding the status and roles of
its inhabitants.
The key findings of the study contribute meaningfully to our understanding of
Pikillacta's archaeological research. The excavations and analyses revealed evidence supporting
the hypothesis that the small, conjoined rooms were indeed associated with low-status
occupants, possibly engaged in unfree labor. The research sheds light on the socio-economic
and labor systems within the Wari empire. Furthermore, the dissertation contextualizes these
findings within a broader, global framework, thereby enriching scholarly discourse on themes
of unfreedom and labor exploitation across diverse temporal and geographical settings

This article tests a model for the political economy of the Wari Empire (AD 600-1000) of Peru. This model divides the empire into core and periphery zones. In the core, Wari political economy was organized to extract surplus agricultural production to feed the capital. In the periphery, the Wari strove to extract prestige goods. We suggest that there is a strong relationship between where the empire chose to locate its centers in the periphery and the political complexity of the local population in which the center was placed. We argue that in areas of low political organization sites should be located near the geographic center of a population. These sites will tend to function as local administrative centers geared toward the organization and exploitation of the area's wealth potential. In areas with more complex political organization sites should be located on the margins of a population. These sites should have functioned as gateway centers controlling, or at least profiting from, interregional exchange. Our model was systematically tested through the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The results suggest that much of the variability found in Wari site placement in the periphery can be explained by differences in local sociopolitical complexity.

In his paper of 1973 the historian Dušan Třeštík localised the key market of Great Moravia at Mikulčice. The basis of such a conclusion was the testimony of two written sources. The first and key one is the Raffelstetten customs tariff from 903-904, in which merchants sailing with Bavarian salt to "The Market of the Moravians" are mentioned. The second source is the so-called Anonymous Relation-a lost text used by a series of the Arabic sources dated to the late ninth or early tenth century and later. Here, a ruler of the Slavs S.W.N.T.BLK (Svatopluk) is mentioned living in the town DŽ.RÁT., where a fair was held every month for three days with fellow natives selling and buying all the items they needed. By linking the testimony of both sources, Třeštík came to the conclusion that "The Market of the Moravians" was the significant fair held at Svatopluk´s town. This town was identified as Mikulčice. The fair mainly involved the exchange of goods within Moravia itself; it was not the centre of long-distance trade. 1 The interpretation of the "Market of the Moravians" as the sole central market of Old Moravia and its localisation at Mikulčice has only been adopted by historians and archaeologists with caution. Some of them believe that the "Market of the Moravians" did not refer to a specific fair, but markets in general, which were held at various centres of the Moravians. 2 The localisation of the seat of Moravian sovereigns is a point of extensive historical and archaeological debate. In my opinion the present state of knowledge hardly allows to identify this centre with certainty to any of the archeologically investigated sites. The same applies to Svatopluk´s Town from the Anonymous Relation. Trade and the economic bases of Great Moravia in general represent a rather unknown field of the history of this Slavic state formation. The issues of trade have been discussed mainly in terms of monetary conditions. 3 Archaeology has been offering

The studies presented in Bad Homburg which dealt with western and central Europe were included in this first volume of papers dedicated to "The Heirs of the Roman West". Two papers from the Pliska conference in Ebernburg (see volume 2) have been incorporated into this volume on the grounds that their subject matter is more compatible. Most papers covering eastern Europe, to Byzantium and to the Near East are to be found in the second volume. The résumés of the Bad Homburg papers were published ahead of the conference. 1 Driven by broad public interest, and after the signing of a joint agreement between the University of Frankfurt and Bad Homburg Town Council on cooperation in the promotion of research on the history of the medieval town of Homburg, the Town Council provided a substantial initial budget to instigate archaeological and interdisciplinary efforts to research into the earliest roots of the development of settlement in the town. Earlier there had been intense public discussions of what was assumed to be first mention of historical urban occupation: this referred to a place called Dietigheim which in the late medieval period lay close to but outside the town fortifications, and was traditionally related to a villa Tidenheim referred to in a charter (deed of donation) of the Carolingian abbey of Lorsch dating to March 20, 782 AD. 2 The question arose as to whether this was sufficient evidence for dating the origins of settlement in the town.

Matrimonial alliances, name-giving, and sponsorship define the relations of the Franks with the the 6th-century Lombards and Gepids, as well as with the 9th-century Moravia. Less attention has been paid to the “language of hair.” Einhard’s description of the last Merovingian king as sitting on the throne with hair long and beard uncut is a “deprecatory expression of enfeeblement.” Nobody has so far explored the meanings of beards associated with warriors. Networks of warrior-based societies are revealed by the examination of early medieval male burials. While the combination of scissors (shears) and combs was interpreted in reference to haircut, combs, scissors, and tweezers typically appear with males from the age iuvenis up, but are more common, especially when found together, in graves of old men. In 9th-century Moravia and Croatia, razors appear in graves together with weapons—swords, lance heads, seax, battle axes, and arrow heads. Such observations apply to particular regions of the European continent and specific chronological spans, but no attempt has been made to explore changes in a long-term perspective (several centuries) within a restricted, well-defined region and in the light of networks of warriors. In this chapter we do just that. Our goal is to shed some light on practices linked to the self-representation of warriors and the social symbolism of facial hair, all in the context of the building of networks in the region.

The production of cloth, even to meet a community’s most basic needs, is one of the most time-consuming activities in non-industrial societies. This would have been all the more true of the beautiful textile arts of the Andean Middle Horizon. This paper presents data on a common artifact class related to textile manufacture, spindle whorls, recovered during excavation at Pataraya, a Huari colony located along a likely trade route between the south coast and the sierra in the southern Nasca Valley. The whorls were specially made, well-crafted, and nicely decorated. They were found in a number of different contexts suggesting that spinning was an ongoing, continuous activity woven into the other daily chores, special tasks, and extraordinary events of life at Pataraya.

Most conceptualizations of the state in archaeology remain rooted in Enlightenment ideas of interlocking institutions that existed external to individuals and their interactions. These static conceptualizations often run counter to the temporal and spatial variability in a state's footprint, especially in those cases where a state expanded and endured across a larger region. In this article, we suggest that states are more fruitfully seen as dynamic assemblages that leaders, as well as other agents, attempt to manipulate to achieve their desires. Reconstructing these desires is most feasible at a meso-scale where broader patterns across local assemblages can be more easily discerned. To demonstrate the utility of this approach, we consider the Wari expansion into the southern coast of Peru during the Middle Horizon (AD 600-1000). The variation in Wari-related flows provides insights into the limits and ancillary effects of state-making in the region.

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The Great Moravian Elites from Mikulčice (GME) is a collective monograph by 35 authors. It provides a comprehensive interdisciplinary account of the social elites in early medieval Mikulčice. The first part of the book describes Great Moravia as a power-political formation on the periphery of the ninth-century Carolingian Empire from a historical point of view. The following two parts bring archaeological evidence that Mikulčice served as both the seat and burial ground of the Moravian princes, with several categories of finds, primarily from graves, revealing signs of power, wealth and worship. The final part presents the results of bioarchaeological research into the skeletal remains from several hundred supposedly elite graves at Mikulčice.

Presented are: the catalogue of ancient sanctuaries of the Czechian and Slovakian Slavs discovered archaeologically, relations to the particular regions or tribal areas, the role of natural conditions by selecting the place for sanctuary build-up. The author makes comparisons of the ground-plans and geographical orientations. The interpretation of the preserved constructive elements is given. The evidences of fire and its signification in the religious ceremonies are discussed. The same was made for the ox as a cultic animal, for the finds of cultic sacrifices and gifts to the sanctuaries. The status of the "žrec" in the Old-Slavonic society is also discussed. The Old-Slavonic cult faded out at the time of Christianity. The sources of recognizing the pre-Christian religion of the Slovakian and Czechian Slavs are very fragmental. One of the basic reasons is the fact that the Slovakian and Czechian Slavs did not create any literature of their own before adopting Christianity. The documents registering political events and social conditions on the mentioned territory originated in relation to Christianity only. The authors, all to a man foreign annalists, did not make any note of information concerning the original religion of the Christianized ethnics. Therefore, due to the absence of any direct written reports, in studying the pre-Christian religion of the Slovakian and Czechian Slavs we are dependent on philological interpretations of some local names, etymology or folklore survivals documented in later records, exceptionally surviving in today's folk culture (Polák 1956, 119-121). This information fixes only several aspects of the Slavonic religiousness; e.g. the position of cultic places cannot be identified by means of written sources. One of the few attempts at identifying a concrete site with a Slavonic sanctuary is connected with the name of the Czech archaeologist I.Borkovský. This researcher stated his presumption that on the hill Žiži, mentioned by the annalists Kosmas and Vincencius in connection with fights between the army of the Polish King Boleslav the Brave and the Czech princes Jaromír and Oldřich in 1004, a pre-Christian sanctuary was located originally. The term Žiži was explained by him as an Old-Slavonic expression for fire, flame, or shining. He situated the hill below the foundations of the oldest church in the Prague Castle, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, which should replace the original cult by Christianity as soon as possible (Borkovský 1949, 38, 40; 1969, 92-93). Borkovský's localization was doubted by later excavations according to which the church of the Virgin Mary was built within the common settlement layer whereby the reconstruction of the original surface geomorphology also opposed the aforesaid theory (Frolík-Smetánka 1997, 48, 63). Devín, the hilltop fort above the confluence of the rivers Danube and Morava is also sometimes mentioned as a cultic place, because of its especial position (Rybakov 1981, 285). But not even the long-lasting archaeological research offered

This thesis is an archaeological investigation of Tambo Colorado, a major archaeological site in the Pisco Valley (South Coast, Peru).  The archaeological site, located on the northern bank of the Pisco river, is known especially for its Inca occupation and ceremonial core, which features the Inca-style monumental architecture and well-preserved polychrome murals. The Inca occupation has been the focus of many studies by Peruvian and foreign archaeologists since the beginning of the 20th century. Despite great advances in understanding the ancient settlement, the areas surrounding the monumental core, which are rarely visited and heavily looted, have seen very little systematic study and publication. This thesis investigates the wider settlement and occupation of Tambo Colorado and reports on archaeological evidence dating directly before and during the Inca presence in the valley. I focus on the cultural patterning of different sectors of the site, especially contexts adjacent to the Inca monumental core, specifically in rocky and higher areas flanking the monumental sector. 

I describe and use a framework, broadly centred on social complexity and local identity, to help contextualise and shed light on previous research about the Tambo Colorado site, and then the new evidence of my field investigations. In particular, I report on data resulting from mapping, surface collections and sampling excavations that I led and completed at these sectors. These include architectural features, pottery, lithics, textiles, and other remains. 

Overall, this thesis contributes new evidence and insights concerning the prehistory of Peru, particularly the South Coast during the last centuries before the Europeans. The reporting of assemblages provides new data and cultural patterning of multiple artefact classes to characterise activity contexts and the cultural affiliation of groups settled around the Inca period monumental core of the Tambo Colorado site complex.

The chapter is a part of an impressive volume dedicated to the phenomenon of collapse as reflected through different kinds of historical and environmental evidence. The chapter is focused on the phenomenon of Great Moravia -  a transient society, which had reached a point somewhere between an advanced chiefdom and early state. However, Great Moravia dominated politically and culturally the eastern part of Central Europe in the 9th century AD. The collapse of Great Moravia it is an extraordinarily interesting example of a thriving Early Mediaeval empire, which experienced a sudden decline over a very short period of time.. The development of Moravia can be documented by the large number of archaeological finds acquired over the more than half a century of intensive research activity.

The excavated foundations of a ninth-century sacral building in the northeastern suburb of Pohansko, an important centre of Great Moravia, and especially the find of the nobleman’s grave H 153, has focused scholarly attention onto the nature of the Mojmirid state and the reasons behind its sudden disintegration. In this volume, a group of archaeologists, historians and a natural scientist aim to incorporate this remarkable discovery into the wider frameworks of Moravian power, society, and culture, and thereby arrive at some surprising conclusions.