Mlékojedy - Settlement Site from the Beginning of the Roman Period in Central Bohemia and its Chronological and Cultural Context
Abstract
The preliminary report summarizes several chronological and cultural aspects of the archaeological finds from the settlement dated to the Early Roman Period in Mlékojedy. The settlement was almost entirely excavated in 1972-1976.
The analysis of an extensive set of finds from the settlement from the Early Roman Period in Mlékojedy provides the basis for various research questions. This article summarizes the finds providing the main chronological, but also cultural and historical support, especially in relation to the Late La Tène settlement structure of Bohemia.
The collection of the fibulas is chronologically correlated with the finds from the nearby necropolis in Tišice that is considered to be funeral area of the same community as in Mlékojedy. There is no doubt that the community based in Mlékojedy and burying their dead at the nearby necropolis in Tišice was of culturally foreign origin (Elbe-Germanic Großromstedt culture).
Nevertheless, it seems that in a new and culturally different environment, the new settlers have been able to communicate and maintain certain ordinary relationships with the autochthon (Celtic) populations. This can be evidenced by small objects of foreign cultural origin (spoon-shaped fibulae, wheel-thrown pottery).
The settling of this community in the immediate vicinity of an important communication hub on the Elbe may be evidence of the gradually declining of the indigenous Late La Tène settlement, which disappears in the decades around the middle of the 1st century BC or transforms into a new culture under the influence of intense migratory movements and historical events. However, before the publication of all sources from Mlékojedy and especially other similar localities in the Czech Republic, these are still rather theoretical hypotheses.
In the future, emphasis should be placed primarily on the analysis of the development of settlements in the centuries around the turn of the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD in specific regions. In this way, it will hopefully be possible to observe different variants of cultural and settlement changes, which may be somewhat different in different places.