Abstract
The archaeological research in the area of the Prague heritage site has been taking place for almost a hundred years, and during this time a large number of non-analyzed data, knowledge and artifacts of everyday material culture have been collected. Part of this accumulated knowledge and artefacts falls just into the period of transformation of settlement form within the Prague suburb in the early Middle Ages.
The period from the 12th to the end of the 13th century is characterized by great variability, when the process of conversion of the Early Medieval settlement agglomeration into a legally constituted medieval town was completed in the beginning of 14th century. The transformation, which is characterized by the partial extinction and reconstruction of the older settlement network within the Old Town of Prague, is to a large extent captured on the eastern edge of the Old Town of Prague (when evaluating findings from archaeological research) in the vicinity of the extinct church of St.
Benedict. This enormous change in the entire eastern part of the Old Town, when the residential structures of the early medieval Prague aglomeration are replaced by the newly built Old Town fortifications and the space after them newly redeveloped and built is unique in the whole of Central Europe.
The area of interest is defined by the streets Dlouhá, U Obecního domu, Rybná and Náměstí Republiky, where important archeological situations have been discovered to compare the spatial development of the area after the construction of the Old Town city walls. Archaeological research has been carried out in this relatively wide area since the 1970s.
One of the most important researches carried out in this area is below today's Kotva department store. It is on this area that the Church of Sts.
Benedict (built in the 12th century?) with a burial ground (which can be dated to an earlier period than the church itself - since the late 11th century?). Around the middle of the 13th century, the entire area around the Church of Sts.
Benedict was radically transformed due to the construction of the Old Town fortifications. Along with the construction of the Old Town walls, the area around the church of St.
Benedict, and church itself, were radically rebuilt. The construction of the Old Town walls has resulted in an extensive change in the settlement area, where older buildings (Romanesque block houses, recessed objects of various shapes and functions) are intentionally cut/destroyed and covered and a systém of fortifications is created instead.
An integral part of the evaluation of archaeological research will be a in-depth analysis of ceramics from the 12th to the 2nd half of the 13th century, when the individual ceramic shapes and forms will be analyzed in detail and then a proposal of their relative and, if possible, absolute chronology will be created. A separate question is the chronology and appearance of the ceramic spectrum in the second half of the 13th century, when the emergence of new ceramic molds (the question of the appearance of so-called red-painted ceramic goods) is evident.