Das Ende Großmährens – Überlegungen zur relativen und absoluten Chronologie des ostmitteleuropäischen Frühmittelalters

Abstract The Fall of Great Moravia. Reflections on relative and absolute chronology of Early Middle Ages in the East-Central Europe. Dating the so-called Great Moravian jewelry and Great Moravian church graveyards is one of the crucial tasks of archaeology of the Early Middle Ages. The chronological systems developed based on the rich graves investigated over the past 60 years within the Czech Republic help in dating archaeological finds from the 9 th to the 10 th century all over Europe. This study addresses the question of how long the luxury jewelry existed as part of living culture and until when the earliest church graveyards with burials of people clad in the traditional Great Moravian costume existed in Moravia. The solution to this problem is supported by assessments of finds from graves excavated at Pohansko near Břeclav and, most importantly, by radiocarbon dating the application of which is still not common in archaeology of the Early Middle Ages. The result of the present research is a finding that in Great Moravian church graveyards burials continued consistently until the mid-10th century, occasionally probably even a little longer. People were interred there wearing the typical Great Moravian costume which included the luxury jewelry as its component. It is a significant correction of the previous opinions and a partial return to the original dating of Great Moravian material culture from the 1950s and 1960s.