The Prague Castle, centre of Czech State, in the Mirror of Cemeteries and Tombs in the Time of Přemyslid´s and Luxembourg´s Dynasties

dr. K. Tomková (404/01/0853) 2001-2003)

This project - phase of the complex analysis of the Prague Castle - aims at the collection and revision of sources for all funerary activities within the Prague Castle and Hradčany precincts datable into the 9th - 15th centuries. The choice of the site follows out of the uniqueness of the complex including cemeteries of the élites, of Church communities and of the remainig population, ducal and royal tombs as well as sepulchral monuments of Catholic saints and Church dignitaries (more than 1000 graves). The exceptional character of the area is underlined by a factual continuity of burial activities reaching from the Pre- and Early Christian Ages as far as the High Medieval period. The chief contribution of this project will be the summation of the entire source base, supplemented by detailed analyses of selected objects and by physical-anthropology assessments in a "Catalogue of Cemeteries and Tombs at the Prague Castle and at Hradčany in the 9th-15th centuries". The essential evidence on the topography of cemetery areas and on the entire funerary sequence between death and burial, illuminated by the Prague Castle-related archaeological and written sources, as well as on the destinies of tombs during subsequent historical periods, will be subsumed in a final paper taking up especially the socio-cultural aspects of the abovementioned phenomena.n the destinies of tombs during subsequent historical periods, will be subsumed in a final paper taking up especially the socio-cultural aspects of the abovementioned phenomena.