Archaeologists uncover the Pohanska fortification system
Archaeologists are gradually uncovering the extent of the fortification line of one of the most famous settlements of Great Moravia – Pohansko in today's Břeclav region. The wall was an impressive 6 to 6.5 meters wide, and part of it has been preserved. Archaeologists have now identified the location of one of the gates, which stood right next to the hunting lodge built here by the Liechtenstein family at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. This is a surprising finding, as experts had previously expected that this part of the fortifications had been completely destroyed during the construction of the lodge. This is the conclusion of research conducted by experts involved in the RES-HUM project.
The fortification system of the Great Moravian Pohansko near Břeclav is one of the best researched and most thoroughly documented in Central Europe, yet current research is yielding new and unexpected findings. Archaeologists have been working at the site almost continuously since the 1950s. The fortified part of Pohansko covered an area of 28 hectares and the walls were around two kilometers long. In recent years, experts have focused on the southwestern section of the walls, which had been neglected until now. "We expected that nothing had been preserved in this area, but new methods have shown us that all is not lost," said Petr Dresler from the Department of Archaeology and Museology at Masaryk University in Brno.
The southwestern section of the fortifications is among the most damaged. The original wall was lowered and leveled, and in some places it was completely removed. However, thanks to systematic work, archaeologists know the original form of the fortifications. The wall was 6 to 6.5 m wide, had a wooden foundation grid, a stone front wall, a wooden rear wall, and a clay-loam embankment through which connecting clamps passed from the front wall to the rear wooden wall. The height of the wall is estimated to be at least three meters.
"The wall was built sometime after 883, but a later date in the last decade of the 9th century cannot be ruled out. We assume that it was destroyed by fire during the turbulent period at the beginning of the 10th century. The looting and destruction of the front wall and the demolition of the upper part of the embankment core cannot yet be dated with certainty," said Dresler. However, based on findings from recent research at the castle in Břeclav, it is highly likely that the stone from the front wall and its destruction was looted as early as the 11th century in connection with the construction of fortifications at a nearby castle and perhaps even later, for example during the construction of the church in Břeclav, which, according to petrographic analysis, was built from the same stone.
Experts attribute the fact that part of the fortifications have been preserved in almost intact form to the fact that the Great Moravian fortified settlement belonged to the owners of Břeclav Castle and Chateau. "Thanks to this, the stone was not looted as intensively as was the case, for example, in Valy u Mikulčic. If stone was quarried, it must have been done under the direct control of the estate owners," said Dresler. Moreover, according to him, it seems that the Liechtensteins did not use stone from the ramparts in the construction of the chateau, because in this case the material belongs petrographically to a different source of stone raw material than the stone from the ramparts, which was quarried in the Holíč and Skalice area.
Archaeologists have also apparently determined the location where the southern gate to the central complex is most likely to be found. It stood just a short distance from the chateau, where the road is today. The latest research on the site has clearly shown that not everything was completely destroyed by the construction of the castle or by the landscaping during its construction. In the future, archaeologists will focus on understanding the construction of the gate and on a new, previously unknown fortified site, which they recently discovered a few hundred meters north of Pohansko.
