As a crucial food staple, grain was stored in castles in medieval and Early Modern Bohemia in granaries or in sections of farm buildings designated and adapted for storage purposes. However, during periods of conflict, other spaces intended for different purposes were also occasionally used for storage. During research into the palace complex in the north-western part of Křivoklát Castle in Central Bohemia, a large find of burnt grain and other crops from the 1421 harvest was uncovered. The results of an archaeobotanical analysis provided a completely new perspective on the creation of emergency food supplies during times of conflict within the context of medieval castles, both in terms of the composition of these food supplies and their location on castle grounds.
The exceptional enclosed site of Herxheim, characterised by hundreds of deliberately fragmented human skeletons whose skulls were transformed into calottes, alongside intentionally destroyed pottery and stone artefacts, constitutes one of the most significant assemblages of the late Linear Pottery culture (LBK). Comparable late LBK settlements with earthworks likewise display structured depositional practices and formal burials of human individuals within enclosure ditches. The site of Vráble, discovered and partially excavated in recent years, now provides a further case that is comparable to Herxheim in several aspects, although the specific social and historical circumstances underlying each site appear to have been highly particular. It is argued that the small number of LBK earthworks containing unusually treated human remains share a set of recurring features that point towards patterned practices. These practices cannot be meaningfully interpreted as evidence of large-scale warfare at the end of the LBK. Instead, they are more plausibly understood as material expressions of profound transformations in social relations, ritual practice, and ontological conceptions during this time. The destabilisation of established cosmological frameworks among the first farming communities may thus have played a significant role in the processes that ultimately led to the dissolution of the LBK cultural system.
The organisation of hunter-gatherer campsites and whether repetitive behaviour patterns are reflected in the cultural and functional context of archaeological sites remains an important issue in Mesolithic archaeology. We analysed the material from the Rydno and Wieliszew sites in Poland, using the refitting of flint artefacts, the identification of use-wear on tools, and their spatial analysis to deliver the reconstruction of socio-technical processes that affected the formation of flint assemblages. The results indicate that despite the similar function of the campsites at Rydno and Wieliszew, they differed in the use of natural resources. These results are discussed in a broad European context and compared with findings obtained elsewhere. The article highlights new opportunities for reinterpreting many previously studied Mesolithic sites, some of which are already recognised as archival collections. Such lithic collections have the potential for developing new theories and comparing them with findings derived from materials obtained using modern excavation methods. The research results show that studies based on thorough and detailed analysis contribute to a deeper understanding of the processes involved in the formation of Mesolithic sites through the identification and description of settlement structures, which also allows us to determine the spatial and even temporal relationships between them.
