Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-k7rjm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-30T02:08:59.127Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Zeitgeist archaeology: conflict, identity and ideology at Prague Castle, 1918–2018

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2019

Nicholas J. Saunders ,
Jan Frolík  and
Volker Heyd
Nicholas J. Saunders*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, 43 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1UU, UK
Jan Frolík
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology of the CAS, Prague, Letenská Street 4, 118 01, Czech Republic
Volker Heyd
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki, Archaeology, Department of Cultures, P.O. Box 59, Unionkatu 38, 00014, Finland
*
*Author for correspondence (Email: nicholas.saunders@bristol.ac.uk)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The discovery of a tenth-century AD high-status burial at Prague Castle in 1928 led to multiple identifications in the context of two world wars and the Cold War. Recognised variously as both a Viking and Slavonic warrior according to Nazi and Soviet ideologies, interpretation of the interred individual and associated material culture were also entangled with the story of the burial's excavator, the remains and commemorative monuments of two Czech Unknown Soldiers and the creation of the Czechoslovak state. This epic narrative reflects the circumstances of Czechoslovakia and Central Europe across the twentieth century.

Keywords

PragueSlavicVikingNaziideologyidentity

Information

Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 93 , Issue 370 , August 2019 , pp. 1009 - 1025
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Anděl, M. 1999: 100 let od narození prof. MUDR. Jiřího Malého (6.11.1899–7.7.1950). Vesmír 78: 617.Google Scholar
Androshchuk, F. 2014. Viking swords. Swords and social aspects of weaponry in Viking Age societies. Stockholm: Swedish History Museum.Google Scholar
Arnold, B. 1990. The past as propaganda: totalitarian archaeology in Nazi Germany. Antiquity 54: 464–78. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00078376Google Scholar
Bender, B. & Winer, M. (ed.). 2001. Contested landscapes: movement, exile and place. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Borkovský, I. 1940. Staroslovanská keramika ve střední Evropě. Studie k počátkům slovanské kultury. Prague: Česká Matice.Google Scholar
Borkovský, I. 1941. Das Wikingergrab auf der Prager Burg. Altböhmen und Altmähren 1: 171–82.Google Scholar
Borkovský, I. 1946. Hrob bojovníka z doby knížecí na Pražském hradě. Památky Archeologické 42: 122–31, 212 & 231.Google Scholar
Borkovský, I. 1972. Prager Burg zur Zeit der Přemyslidenfürsten. Prague: Academia.Google Scholar
Díaz-Andreu, M. & Champion, T.. 1996. Nationalism and archaeology in Europe: an introduction, in Díaz-Andreu, M. & Champion, T. (ed.) Nationalism and archaeology in Europe: 1–23. London: UCL Press.Google Scholar
Domanska, E. 2006. The material presence of the past. History and Theory 45: 337–48. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2303.2006.00369.xGoogle Scholar
Eisenschmidt, S. 2004. Grabfunde des 8. bis 11. Jahrhunderts zwischen Kongeå und Eider. Zur Bestattungssitte der Wikingerzeit im südlichen Altdänemark. Volume 1. Neumünster: Wachholtz.Google Scholar
Frolík, J. 2014. Pohřebiště v Lumbeho zahradě Pražského hradu. Analýza, chronologie, význam [Cemetery in the Lumbe Garden of the Prague Castle. Analysis, chronology, significance], in Frolík, J. (ed.) Pohřebiště v Lumbeho zahradě na Pražském hradě. Díl II. Studie: 5–115. Prague: Archeologický ústav AV ČR.Google Scholar
Gossler, N. 2014. Wikingerzeitliche Waffen- und Reitzubehörfunde aus dem Berliner Bestand der Prussia-Sammlung (ehemals Königsberg/Ostpreussen) und ihre Beziehung zu Skandinavien. Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica 46: 1–26.Google Scholar
Guth, K. 1929a. Pražský hrad v době sv. Václava. Lidové noviny 28 September 1929.Google Scholar
Guth, K. 1929b. Počátky Prahy, in Odložilík, O., Prokeš, J. & Urbánek, R. (ed.) Českou minulostí. Sborník k šedesátinám prof. Václava Novotného: 50–64. Praha: J. Laichter.Google Scholar
Guth, K. 1934. Praha, Budeč a Boleslav. Svatováclavský sborník 1: 686–818.Google Scholar
Hare, J.L. 2014. Nazi archaeology abroad: German prehistorians and the international dynamics of collaboration. Patterns of Prejudice 48: 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2013.875249Google Scholar
Kaupová, S., Velemínský, P., Stranská, P., Bravermanová, M., Frolíková, D., Tomková, K. & Frolík, J.. 2018. Dukes, elites, and commoners: dietary reconstruction of the early medieval population of Bohemia (9th–11th century AD, Czech Republic). Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 11: 1887–1909. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-018-0640-8Google Scholar
Klazarová, P. (ed.). 2003. The story of Prague Castle. Prague: Správa Pražského hradu.Google Scholar
Kristiansen, K. 2014. Towards a new paradigm? The Third Science Revolution and its possible consequences in archaeology. Current Swedish Archaeology 22: 11–34.Google Scholar
Lehmann, H. & Oexle, O.G. (ed.). 2004. Nationalsozialismus in den Kulturwissenschaften (Veroffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts fur Geschichete 200/2011). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Malá, V. 1997. History of the obelisk, in Abdallaova, N. & Martlew, J. (ed.) Josip Plečnik –an architect of Prague Castle: 291–95. Prague: Prague Castle Administration.Google Scholar
Malý, J. 1942. Anthropologické vyšetření kostry, odkryté na 3. nádvoří Hradu pražského v r. 1928. Unpublished manuscript, Prague Castle Archive.Google Scholar
Maříková-Kubková, J., Mašterová, K. & Válová, K.. 2015. Prague Castle, in Vicelja-Matijašić, M. (ed.) Swords, crowns, censers and books. Francia Media—cradles of European culture: 187–212. Rijeka: University of Rijeka.Google Scholar
Obermair, R. 2015. Das NS-Engagement Kurt Willvonseders und die schwierige Frage nach Entnaziefirung der Wissenschaft. Archaeologia Austriaca 99: 155–75. https://doi.org/10.1553/archaeologia99s155Google Scholar
Paulsen, P. 1939. Axt und Kreuz bei den Nordgermanen. Berlin: Das Ahnenerbe.Google Scholar
Pedersen, A. 2014. Dead warriors in living memory. A study of weapon and equestrian burials in Viking-Age Denmark, AD 800–1000. Copenhagen: University Press of Southern Denmark and the National Museum of Denmark.Google Scholar
Petrinec, M. 2009. Gräberfelder aus dem 8. bis 11. Jahrhundert im Gebiet des frühmittelalterlichen kroatischen Staates. Split: Museum der kroatischen archäologischen Denkmäler.Google Scholar
Poulík, J. & Chropovský, B.. 1985. Velká Morava a počátky československé státnosti. Prague & Bratislava: Academia & Obzor.Google Scholar
Preidel, H. 1936–1937. Ein Wikingergrab in Saaz. Krajem Lučanů 11: 34–38. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01572491Google Scholar
Preidel, H. 1938. Das Begräbnis eines wikingischen Kriegers in Saaz (Böhmen). Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesselschaft in Wien 68: 88–98.Google Scholar
Preidel, H. 1944. Handel und Verkehr in den Sudetenländern während der ersten Hälfte des ersten Jahrtausends n. Chr. Südost-Forschungen 9–10: 41–80.Google Scholar
Profantová, N. 2005. Poznámky k meči z hrobu bojovníka na III. nádvoří Pražského hradu, in Tomková, K. (ed.) Pohřbívání na Pražském hradě a jeho předpolích, Díl I.1: 307–10. Praha: Archeologický ústav AV ČR.Google Scholar
Profantová, N. 2012. Examples of the most important results of technological analyses of swords in the Czech Republic, in Bendeguz, T. (ed.) Die Archäologie der früher Ungarn. Chronologie, Technologie und Methodik: 169–90. Mainz: Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum.Google Scholar
Renshaw, L. 2013. The dead and their public. Memory campaigns, issue networks and the role of the archaeologist in the excavation of mass graves. Archaeological Dialogues 20: 35–47. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203813000081Google Scholar
Sherman, D. 1999. The construction of memory in interwar France. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sláma, J. 1977. Mitelböhmen im frühen Mittelalter. I. Katalog der Grabfunde. Prague: Univerzita Karlova.Google Scholar
Smetánka, Z. 1997. Vzpomínka na Ivana Borkovského. Archeologické rozhledy 49: 704–707.Google Scholar
Uhlíř, J. & Klimek, A.. 2008. Protektorát Čechy a Morava v obrazech. Praha: Ottovo nakladatelství.Google Scholar
Vlček, E. 1977. Nejstarší Přemyslovci. Praha: Vesmír.Google Scholar
Wiwjorra, I. 1996. German archaeology and its relation to nationalism and racism, in Díaz-Andreu, M. & Champion, T. (ed.) Nationalism and archaeology in Europe: 164–88. London: UCL Press.Google Scholar
Zotz, L. 1934. Zwei germanische Schwerter aus der slawischen Zeit in Schlesien. Altschlesien 4: 162–65.Google Scholar
Zotz, L. & von Richtofen, B.. 1940. Ist Böhmen-Mähren die Urheimat der Tschechen? Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth.Google Scholar