The Slavniks and Saxony

BUFM 60, Mařík, „Slavniks“, 191–197193Fig. 2. Libice nad Cidlinou, the church on the inner bailey (after Turek et. al. 1981).the transept and the presbytery (fig. 2), archaeologistslack cross-section drawings. Thus, anyfurther evaluation must rely mainly on verbaldescriptions of finding circumstances observedduring archaeological excavations of the church(Turek 1981, 6–23), and the adjacent cemetery(Turek 1978).The foundations of the church were embeddedin the so-called leveling layer 5 that represents,from the stratigraphic point of view, acrucial milestone in the development of thisparticular site. This layer that covered both sunkensettlement features and graves dating to theearliest development phase of the stronghold isabsolutely dated from the end of the 9 th to thehalf of the 10 th centuries. The origin of this levelinglayer is dated on the basis of pottery findsinto the second development phase of the strongholdthat covers the time period from betweenthe mid 10 th century and the turn of the 10 th and11 th centuries (Mařík 2008). A number of objectsthat document the exceptionality of this area5 For detailed information on stratigraphic developmentof the Libice inner bailey, cf. Princová/Mařík 2006.has been discovered both within the interior ofthe church and in its close vicinity (Wieczorek/Hinz 2000, 294–297). These finds include the discoveryof a writing stylus, a fragment of a reliquaryfitting, as well as fragments of two stoneepigraph stelae (Charvát 2007), just to mentiona few of them. However, such objects should beevaluated only under great precautions for theymight have been, and probably were, repeatedlyrelocated, and mixed up with much later findsdue to the long-time quarrying of stone thatwas used as building material. Fragment of abell (Wieczorek/Hinz 2000, 295) that accordingto Turek’s view proves the existence of a woodenbell tower standing next to northern wall ofthe transept may be used as an example of suchmisinterpretation. As recent chemical analyzesclearly show the discovered bell fragment wasin fact made of cast-iron in the 19 th century. 66 Communication for which I would like to thank Mr. JiříKošta, National Museum in Prague, History museum,Department of Prehistory and Protohistory, curator of thearchaeological collections.