Project Description
Recent research in the field of the Early Medieval archaeology in Slovakia and Austria resulted in several publications concerned with the cultural and historical development of the Early Medieval period. However, all of them are based almost exclusively on the data either from Slovakia or from Austria, without their (in)direct correlation, and hardly aiming at transregional comparison . If we compare „maps of knowledge“ on the cultural-historical, social, palaeoeconomical or paleoecological situation (reflected e.g. in settlement patterns) of the Lower Morava valley, the border region between modern day Slovakia and Austria, we see, that the area still remains a „terra incognita“.
It is important to stress, that the previous research was limited by modern day geo-political border, so the settlement structures on both sites of the Lower Morava valley were never researched as one complex entity – a connected system consisting of various types of settlements and burial grounds. The reasons for his were manifold: language barriers, different state of research as well as different chronological and typological terminologies etc. If we consider the settlement structure as one system, it needs to be stressed that by so far the attention has been paid almost exclusively only to one specific entity – fortified settlements .
The crucial role of the project is to find the most effective ways and methods which help us to fill the described “gaps“. This is being achieved by collecting as much data as possible on archaeological sites and “find-spots” in one common database and by using common terminology and chronology. These data will be open access and available for wider audience even after the completion of the project. As such they will allow to perform multiple joint crossborder analyses for example in GIS, statistical analyses, network-analyses, and agent based modelling etc. – which were not yet possible.