The Glass of Great Moravia: Vessel and Window Glass, and Small Objects

Jiří Macháček

Great Moravia was a minor empire in central Europe that lasted some seven decades in the ninth century.Vessel glass, flat glass, and small objects were neglected for a considerable period. At present, such objects are known from the five most important localities in Moravia. Although all existing collections of finds have not yet been studied,the current state of our knowledge covers a wide range in terms of vessel types and compositions.

REPRINTED FROM JOURNAL OF GLASS STUDIES VOLUME 54 • 2012 Luděk Galuška, Jiří Macháček, Karol Pieta, and Hedvika Sedláčková The Glass of Great Moravia: Vessel and Window Glass, and Small Objects Copyright © 2012 by The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY 14830-2253 The Glass of Great Moravia: Vessel and Window Glass, and Small Objects Luděk Galuška, Jiří Macháček, Karol Pieta, and Hedvika Sedláčková G REAT MORAVIA was a minor empire in central Europe that lasted some seven decades in the ninth century. In its heyday, around 880–895, it incorporated the whole of today’s Czech Republic and Slovakia, the southern part of Poland, the western part of Hungary, and parts of northern Austria. Its creators were Slavs, said in the records to have taken the name “Moravians” from the Morava River, which runs through the heart of the territory. Established by Prince Mojmír (r. 830–846), Moravia became a kingdom under Svatopluk (r. 870–894). The Moravian aristocracy maintained contacts with the Byzantine emperors, the Frankish emperors, and the popes. Attention turned to the material culture of Great Moravia in the 1950s, when archaeological research began into large complexes in the towns of Mikulčice, Staré Město at Uherské Hradiště, Pohansko at Břeclav, and other localities. Jewels made of nonferrous and noble metals, as well as items made of iron, wood, and ceramics, have been published in detail and evaluated. Attention to the glass products focused largely on ornamental accessories, including beads, buttons, and—less frequently—stones set in rings.1 Vessel glass, lat glass, and small objects were neglected for a considerable period. At present, such objects are known from the ive most important localities in Moravia—Mikulčice, Olomouc, Pohansko at Břeclav (referred to hereafter as Pohansko /B), Pohansko at Nejdek (referred to hereafter as Pohansko /N) and Uherské Hradiště–Sady, all in Moravia, and Bojná near Topol’čianky in Slovakia. Kolín in Bohemia, site of the irst published inding of glass vessels from the region, was also under the inluence of Great Moravia (Fig. 1). It may be assumed that this distribution is not inal: such glass evidently penetrated the social elite to a much larger extent than has previously been supposed. In Kolín, two vessels were found in a rich royal grave, discovered by chance in 1863, that contained the remains of two people: a man and a woman. The man’s grave goods included a silver-gilt chalice, a sword with scabbard and silver-gilt ferrule, gilded copper and silver-gilt spurs, iron harness attachments, and a small cylindrical object made of ivory mounted in gold, possibly an amulet. The woman’s remains were accompanied by a pair of silver-gilt earrings and three longitudinally ribbed beads made of dark blue glass. The grave is dated to the second half of the ninth century.2 Two glass vessels, complete at the time of burial, were also part of the man’s 1. See, for example, Vilém Hrubý, Staré Město, velkomorav ské pohřebiště “Na valách,” Prague: Nakladatelství Československá Akademie Věd, 1955, pp. 246–258, igs. 85 and 86; Bořivoj Dostál, Slovanská pohřebiště ze střední doby hradišt ní na Moravě, Prague: Academia, 1966; František Kalousek, Břeclav–Pohansko, v. 1, Velkomoravské pohřebiště u kostela = Grossmährisches Gräberfeld bei der Kirche, Brno: Universita J. E. Purkyně, 1971; and Danica Staššiková and Šimon Ungermann, “Sklené koráliky z včasnostredovekého pohrebiska v Dolních Věstoniciach = Glasperlen aus dem frühmittelalterlichen Gräberfeld in Dolní Věstonice,” in Archeologie doby hradištní, Archaologia medievalis Moravica et Silesiana, supp. 2, ed. Petr Dresler and others, Brno: Masarykova Univerzita, 2009, pp. 136–149. 2. Innocenc Ladislav Píč, “Dvojitý hrob v cihelně p. Součka v Kolíně,” Památky Archeologické (Prague), v. 15, 1892, pp. 715–728; Michal Lutovský, “Kolínský knížecí hrob: Ad fontes,” Sborník Národního Muzea Řada A Historie, v. 48, 1994, pp. 37–76; idem, “Kolín 1984: Nejvýznamnější hrobový nález českého raného středověku,” in České země v raném středověku, ed. Petr Sommer, Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové Noviny, 2006, pp. 213–231. 61 FIG. 1. The Great Moravian Empire at about the midninth century (dark) and at its greatest extent (early 890s): (1) Bojná, Slovakia; (2) Kolín, Bohemia; (3) Mikulčice, Moravia; (4) Olomouc, Moravia; (5) Pohansko at Břeclav, Moravia; (6) Pohansko at Nejdek, Moravia; (7) Uherské Hradiště–Staré Město–Sady, Moravia; and (8) Zalavár, Hungary. grave goods; a separate study has been devoted to their detailed analysis and evaluation.3 One vessel is a small beaker (H. 7 cm, D. [rim] about 6.3 cm) decorated with an applied network consisting of two rows of trails. The transparent soda-lime glass, colored with cobalt, is bluegreen with numerous bubbles (Fig. 2.1 and Table, A 03).4 The second vessel is an undecorated bowl (H. 2.6 cm) with a tubular rim (D. 12.6 cm) folded outward. The glass has a composition very similar to that of the beaker, and although it has a higher content of cobalt oxide, it is light greenish (Fig. 2.2 and Table, A 04).5 A glass vessel from another double grave, uncovered in the Kolín town square in the 1930s, 62 was lost during World War II.6 Further vessel glass inds in Bohemia are conined to vague descriptions of inds from Rubín, a fortiied settlement near Dolánky, in the northern part of the country.7 3. Jiří Košta, Hedvika Sedláčková, and Václav Hulínský, “Skleněné předměty z raně středověkého knížecího hrobu v Kolíně,” Časopis Národního Muzea (Prague), v. 180, 2011, pp. 51–81. 4. National Museum, Prague, no. 55 106. 5. National Museum, Prague, no. 55 105. 6. František Dvořák, Pravěk Kolínska a Kouřimska, Kolín: Nákladem Učitelstva Školního Okresu Kolínského, 1936, p. 105. 7. Olga Drahotová and others, Historie sklářské výroby v českých zemích, v. 1, Prague: Academia, p. 59, n. 1. 2.1 (Table, A 03) 2.2 (Table, A 04) 2.3 FIG. 2. Top to bottom: Beaker with trailed decoration and bowl from Kolín, Bohemia; and beaker with trailed decoration from Pohansko at Nejdek, Moravia. (Drawings: 1:2) 63 TABLE Analysis No. A 01 A 02 A 02a A 03 A 04 Locality Bojná Bojná Bojná Kolín Kolín Beaker Smoother Smoother Beaker1 with net corrosion with net Object Bowl2 A 05 A 06 A 07 A 08 A 09 A 10 Pohansko/B Pohansko/B Pohansko/B Pohansko/B Pohansko/B Olomouc Beaker with net Funnel beaker Bottle Smoother 1 Smoother 2 Bottle3 Windowpane4 23.32 Hm% Aver. Aver. Aver. Aver. Aver. SiO2 71.04 64.23 92.22 70.44 70.07 71.45 74.18 67.12 71.15 54.56 65.61 Na2O 15.04 1.1 0.44 12.73 13.06 12.28 15.61 0.51 17.83 0.72 16.87 K2O 1.08 17.07 1.5 1.09 1.02 0.56 0.5 3.77 0.8 18.54 0.49 CaO 6.90 12.33 1.27 8.94 8.41 10.38 4.98 21.16 5.79 16.24 8.53 Aver. MgO 0.85 3.15 0.97 0.80 0.28 0.43 0.75 2.81 0.6 4.08 Al2O3 2.58 0.99 3.6 2.85 2.51 1.96 2.81 3.43 1.84 2.97 Cl 0.48 0.33 – 1.04 1.20 0.82 0.16 – 0.73 0 MnO 0.13 0.24 – 0.35 0.46 0.44 0.58 0.86 0.41 1.05 Fe2O3 1.84 0.35 – 0.91 0.44 1.45 0.45 0.29 0.66 1.78 TiO2 0.06 0.06 – 0.06 0.06 0.6 CoO 0.04 0.05 0.23 P2O5 0.29 0.01 SO3 0.14 0.24 CuO 0 0 SnO2 0.26 SbO2 0 PbO 0.17 Soda-lime Wood-ash Quartz glass glass Type of glass A 11 Olomouc 2.75 0.15 1.47 74.62 Soda-lime Soda-lime Soda-lime glass glass glass Soda-lime glass ? Soda-lime glass Wood-ash glass Soda-lime glass Lead glass young? Results of analysis A 01, A 02, A 02a, and A 05–A 09: Dana Rohanová, Ph.D., Institute of Glass and Ceramics of the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague. 1. 2. 3. 4. Košta, Sedláčková, and Hulínský [note 3], table 1, no. 55106. Ibid., table 1, no. 55105. Bláha [note 22], pp. 81 and 82, table, no. 5. Ibid., pp. 79 and 81, table, no. 1. In Moravia, the irst whole vessel to be published came from Pohansko / N. A small beaker (H. 8.2 cm, D. [rim] 6.8 cm) made of slightly greenish glass, it has a funnel-shaped mouth and is decorated on the lower part of the body with a crisscross pattern of trails (Fig. 2.3). It came from a fortiied settlement irst built by Slavs in the seventh and eighth centuries, and then more intensively settled in the ninth century, when it was fortiied with a stone wall. All that 64 is known is that the ind was made in the course of quarrying for sand in 1940; details of the circumstances are not available.8 Based on its 8. Boris Novotný, “Výzkum velkomoravského hradiště ‘Pohansko’ u Nejdku na lednickém Ostrově = Erforschung des grossmärisches Burgwalles ‘Pohansko’ auf dem Lednizer Insel,” Památky Archeologické (Prague), v. 56, no. 1, 1963, pp. 31 and 35, ig. 27. Probably preserved only in the documentation in the Archaeological Institute in Brno (Photographic Archive File No. 677). state of preservation, however, this ind is probably associated with a grave, similar to some goblets of the same type from Kolín/Bohemia and Birka / Sweden (see below). Next to be published were fragments of vessels, windowpanes, and small objects from excavations in Mikulčice between 1957 and 1992.9 Tragically, from a collection of 138 specimens, only the body fragment of one funnel beaker and the lower part of a lamp have survived.10 The settlement near Mikulčice is situated in a region that contains several branches of the Morava River. An earlier settlement was divided into a fortiied central location and a suburb (suburbium) at the beginning of the ninth century. About 12 stone churches followed, four of them within the fortiications of the hilltop, which also housed a brick palace. In the same defended complex were foundries and forges, and close to the main gate and the church was a jewelry workshop. This settlement reached the peak of its development at the same time as the whole empire was coming to an end, in the inal part of the ninth century; Mikulčice was the secular center of Great Moravia and the seat of the Mojmír dynasty.11 The collection contains a surprisingly large number of fragments of vessel glass dating from the irst to fourth centuries, and fragments of raw glass containing antimony, an element typical of Roman glass, that could also date to this period.12 This is probably “old glass” intended for recycling. The same group also contains four fragments of discoid bases, which may be assigned to the Great Moravian period (see below). A group of 69 fragments dated from the eighth to 10th centuries was found among objects within the fortiied settlement (11 fragments) and its suburb (ive fragments); the rest were sporadic inds.13 These consisted of fragments of vessels, windowpanes, linen smoothers, and one tessera. Among 55 fragments of vessel glass, four types were identiied: (1) Funnel beakers: fragments of at least 14 specimens; it was possible to reconstruct one of them; one has a trail of opaque yellow glass under its rim (Fig. 3.78, .79). The reconstructed body fragment came from a layer of the basilica. Another 12 fragments may be assigned to this type on the basis of their characteristic curvature and glass type.14 They are made of transparent glass with a greenish tint (16 fragments), distinctly green glass (four fragments), and occasionally blue-green, yellow-green, bluish, or violet glass. Three fragments have been analyzed and are made of soda-lime glass with very similar proportions of magnesium, manganese, antimony, lead, and cobalt.15 (2) Globular beakers: eight fragments of inturned rims made of green and blue glass (Fig. 4.31, 4.40, 4.51, 4.65, 4.82, 4.85, and 4.100). Among these are a fragment made of deep green glass with an opaque white trail on the neck (Fig. 4.108) and body fragments with trailed decoration made of the same glass as the vessel. There is part of a crisscross pattern of light green 9. Zdenka Himmelová, “Nález okenního skla z Mikulčic = Fund des Fensterglases aus Mikulčice,” Jižní Morava (Mikulov), v. 25, 1989, pp. 233–239; idem, “Glasfunde aus Mikulčice,” in Studien zum Burgwall von Mikulčice, v. 1, ed. Falko Daim and Lumír Poláček, Spisy Archeologického ústavu AV ČR Brno, v. 2, 1995, pp. 83–112; idem, “Nálezy skla z Milulčic (okr. Hodonín) = Die Glasfunde aus Mikulčice,” in Historické sklo, v. 2, Sborník pro dějiny skla, Čelákovice: Městské Muzeum v Čelákovicích, 2000, pp. 85–99. 10. The collection was lost, together with other materials and documentation, when the main building of the archaeological branch of AÚ AV ČR Brno in Mikulčice burned in the summer of 2007. Information about most of the materials may be found in publications and in low-quality photographs taken by one of the authors of this article; not all of the fragments had been documented, however. 11. Lumír Poláček, “Mikulčice,” in Reallexikon der germa nischen Altertumskunde, v. 20, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002, pp. 12–17. 12. Himmelová, “Glasfunde” [note 9], p. 85, igs. 2 and 7. 13. Ibid., igs. 3 and 4. 14. Ibid., nos. 19, 22, 23, 28, 75–77, 90, 95, and 97, and igs. 10.3, .6, .9, .10 and 11.2, .6, .12, .16; also, nos. 13, 29, 54, 74, and 87. 15. Ibid., table 2.3, .24, .66. 65 3.3 3.25 3.63 3.72 3.38 3.66 3.78, .79 FIG. 3. Funnel beakers from Mikulčice, Moravia. The numbers correspond to those in Himmelová, “Glasfunde” [note 9]. (Drawings: 1:2) 66 3.68 3.80 3.84 3.24 3.27 3.94 3.67 FIG. 3 (continued). Funnel beakers from Mikulčice, Moravia. (Drawings: 1:2) glass on one of them (Fig. 4.73); thick horizontal trails are wound around the fragments of blue and light green glass, and ine trails appear on the remaining two (Fig. 4.36 and 4.46). (3) Bottles: a fragment of a blue glass neck with an applied trail of opaque white glass, and two necks with funnel-shaped rims that are probably of ancient Roman origin (Fig. 5.83, 5.59, and 5.81). (4) Lamps. The lower part of a lamp with a solid stem and a bulbous end made of light green soda-lime glass16 came from deposits in the fortiied settlement close to the jeweler’s workshop near the main gate (Fig. 5.89). Three fragments of discoid bases made of light greenish glass, from Church V nearby, and one from Grave 1274 may also be classiied as lamps (Fig. 5.4, 5.5, 5.10, and 5.70). Window glass from the Great Moravian period is represented by fragments of panes found in the fortiied settlement: three yellow-brown specimens and one violet. Analysis of the fragments shows soda-lime glass tinted violet with copper (Fig. 5.115–5.117 and 5.120).17 Zdenka Himmelová has proposed ancient Roman origins for two fragments of blue-green glass from the suburb.18 Fragments and larger parts of eight linen smoothers were found—all but one in the fortiied settlement. Original diameters were 7.8–9 cm, and the glass was brown-green, green, and blue-green, with highly corroded surfaces (Fig. 6.122 and 6.126–6.129).19 Analysis of two specimens showed very similar compositions, with a high lead content.20 A single tessera of opaque gray-blue glass is classiied as ancient Roman.21 Glass from the Great Moravian period has also been published for the city of Olomouc in today’s southern Moravia. Two glass fragments came from layers in the suburb of Předhradí, where the ancient cathedral of Saint Peter once stood.22 The upper part of a small, thick-walled bottle with traces of a neck made of greenish soda-lime glass dates to the irst half of the 10th century.23 A small part of a windowpane with 16. Ibid., table 2.89. 17. Himmelová, “Nález” [note 9]; idem,“Glasfunde” [note 9], table, 2.116. 18. Himmelová, “Glasfunde” [note 9], nos. 118 and 119, and ig. 5. 19. Ibid., small fragments nos. 121, 123, and 125. 20. Jaroslav Frána, “Analýzy skleněných archeologických nálezů z Pohanska a Mikulčic = Analyse archäologischer Glasfunde aus Pohansko und Mikulčice,” Pravěk NŘ (Brno), v. 10, 2000, pp. 115–117: 4.7% K2O and 1.2% Na2O. 21. Himmelová, “Glasfunde” [note 9], no. 124. 22. Josef Bláha, “Nálezy vitrají a dutého skla z období raného středověku na lokalitě Olomouc – Biskupské náměstí č. 1 = Funde des Fenster- und Hohlglases aus dem Frühmittelalter in Olomouc – Bischofsplatz Nr. 1,” in Historické sklo [note 9], p. 82. 23. Ibid., pp. 81–82, no. 5, ig. B.5. 67 4.31 4.40 4.65 4.51 4.82 4.100 4.85 4.108 4.36 4.46 4.73 FIG. 4. Globular beakers from Mikulčice, Moravia. The numbers correspond to those in Himmelová, “Glasfunde” [note 9]. (Drawings: 1:2) 68 5.59 5.81 5.4 5.83 5.5 5.10 5.70 5.89 5.116 5.115 5.117 5.120 FIG. 5. Bottles (nos. 59, 81, and 83), lamps (nos. 04, 05, 10, 70, and 89), and windowpanes (nos. 115–117 and 120) from Mikulčice, Moravia. The numbers correspond to those in Himmelová, “Glasfunde” [note 9]. (Drawings: 1:2) 69 6.122 6.126 6.127 6.128 6.129 FIG. 6. Smoothers from Mikulčice, Moravia. The numbers correspond to those in Himmelová, “Glasfunde” [note 9]. (Drawings: 1:3) one straight grozed edge, from the 10th-century layers, has an irregular dark red trail or streak in transparent glass of honey-brown color. It is lead glass, colored with copper (Fig. 7.1 and 7.2, and Table, A 10 and A 11).24 This collection will be greatly enhanced by contributions from new research in the fortiied settlement in Bojná/Slovakia and from earlier explorations in Pohansko/B and Uherské Hradiště–Sady. In the meantime, glass products (apart from jewels) are known from six Great Moravian fortiied areas, and we can assume that this number is not inal: the social elite of Great Moravia evidently used large amounts of glass. Bojná was a local center of power built in a strategically important position where a pass 70 through the Považský Inovec Mountains connected two densely settled territories in the valleys of the Váh and Nitra Rivers of western Slovakia. Iron ore deposits in the region, together with the gold-bearing potential of the area, were probably already being exploited in Great Moravian times. When the ruling Eurasian nomads, the Avar Khagans, were replaced in the early ninth century, a complex of three large fortiications was built at this site, part of the principality of Nitra, which was later assimilated into Great Moravia. Metalworking and jewelry workshops have been uncovered at the large 24. Ibid., pp. 79 and 81, no. 1, ig. B.1a, .1b. fortiied settlement in Bojná-Valy. Other buildings and objects demonstrate the presence of a social elite. Finds of Christian symbols, bronze bells, and a gilded plaque with igural decoration show that Bojná was one of the aristocratic centers to fall under the inluence of Christian expansion. Brief Latin texts on the plaques are among the irst evidence of the use of Slavic script in central Europe. Judging from evidence of a ire, along with numerous inds of weapons and hoards, Bojná ceased to exist at the beginning of the 10th century.25 Research from 2007 to 2009 recovered fragments of glass in several places. Funnel beakers are represented by a body fragment and rim made of light greenish glass (Fig. 7.3).26 Another fragment, from the body of a globular beaker, is made of light blue glass illed with bubbles; two slightly bent and connected trails of its crisscross decoration survive.27 The soda-lime glass is tinted with Fe2O3 in combination with TiO2 (Fig. 7.4 and Table, A 01). Approximately half of a linen smoother (D. 8.0 cm) was found at the edge of sunken Building 7.28 The surface is highly corroded, but the original wood-ash glass is of an amber color (Fig. 7.5 and Table, A 02 and A 02a). Pohansko/B is located in the southeastern part of modern Moravia near the Austrian border, close to the conluence of the Morava (March) and Dyje (Thaya) Rivers.29 The locality has been investigated in seven principal areas. Following the excavation of what has become known as the Magnate Court, work initially continued in the areas known as the Forest Nursery, the Cremation Cemetery, and the Northeastern (NE) and Southern (S) Suburbs, and in sections through the rampart. Later, trenches were also dug in the Forest Dune site.30 A far-reaching change in settlement structure, both qualitative and quantitative, took place in the Middle Hillfort period, around the ninth century, when Pohansko became one of the most important centers in Moravia. Fortiication was an element vital to the entire Great Moravian agglomeration.31 The most important Great Moravian settlement structure is traditionally referred to as the Magnate Court.32 Excavation results have informed some of the most inluential interpretations of the site as a whole, indicating analogies with Carolingian and Ottonian buildings of a residential-cum-representative nature. Reference has been made to structural parallels with what have become known as palatial centers of the Pfalzen from the Carolingian and Ottonian periods.33 Evidence of intensive occupation in two suburbs of Pohansko has also been found. The NE Suburb34 was spread over a 25. Karol Pieta and Alexander Ruttkay, “Bojná – mocenské a christianizačné centrum Nitrianskeho kniežatstva. Předběžná správa = Bojná – neues Macht- und Christianisierungszentrum des Fürstentums von Nitra. Vorbericht,” in Bojná: Hospodárske a politické centrum Nitrianskeho kniežatstva = Wirtschaftliches und politisches Zentrum Nitraer Fürstentums, ed. Karol Pieta, Alexander T. Ruttkay, and Matej Ruttkay, Nitra: Archeologický ústav SAV, 2007, pp. 21–69; Jiří Janošík and Karol Pieta, “Nález zvona na hradisku z 9. storočia v Bojnej. Náčrt histórie včasnostredovekých zvonov = Ein Glockenfund aus dem Burgwall aus dem 9. Jahrhundert in Bojná. Zur Geschichte der frühmittelalterlichen Glocken,” in ibid., pp. 121–158; Karol Pieta, “Hradiská Bojná II a Bojná III. Významné sídlo z doby st’ahovania národov a opevnenia z 9. storočia = Burgwälle Bojná II a III. Herrensitz der Völkerwanderungszeit und Befestigungen aus dem 9. Jahrhundert,” in ibid., pp. 173–190; Karol Pieta, Bojná nové nálezy k počiatkom slovenských dejín, Bojná: SAV, 2009. 26. Institute of Archaeology, Nitra, nos. 169/07 and 435/08. 27. Institute of Archaeology, Nitra, no. 132/07. 28. Institute of Archaeology, Nitra, no. 476/09. 29. Systematic investigation at Pohansko began when the irst excavations were carried out in 1958 by the Institute of Archaeology and Museology of the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University in Brno. 30. Jiří Macháček, The Rise of Medieval Towns and States in East Central Europe: Early Medieval Centres as Social and Eco nomic Systems, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, v. 10, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010, pp. 33–60. 31. Petr Dresler, Opevnění Pohanska u Břeclavi, Dissertationes archaeologicae Brunenses, v. 11, Brno: Masarykova Univerzita, 2011. 32. Bořivoj Dostál, BřeclavPohansko, v. 4, Velkomoravský velmožský dvorec, Brno: Universita J. E. Purkyně, 1975. 33. Macháček [note 30], pp. 478–484. 34. Petr Dresler, Jiří Macháček, and Renáta Přichystalová, “Die Vorburgen des frühmittelalterlichen Zentralortes in Pohansko bei Břeclav,” in Burg – Vorburg – Suburbium: Zur Proble matik der Nebenareale frühmittelalterlicher Zentren, ed. Ivana Boháčová and Lumír Poláček, Brno: Archäologisches Institut der Akademie der Wissenschaften der Tschechischen Republik, 2008, pp. 229–270. 71 7.1 (Table, A 10) 7.2 (Table, A 11) 7.3 7.4 (Table, A 01) 7.5 (Table, A 02 and A 02a) 7.6 7.7 (Table, A 06) 7.8 (Table, A 05) FIG. 7. (1) Bottle and (2) windowpane from Olomouc, Moravia; (3) funnel beaker(?), (4) globular beaker, and (5) smoother from Bojná, Slovakia; and (6) vessel(?), (7) funnel beaker, and (8) globular beaker from Pohansko/B, Moravia. (Drawings: 1:2) 72 7.9 (Table, A 07) 7.10 (Table, A 08) 7.11 (Table, A 09) FIG. 7 (continued). (9) Bottle, and (10 and 11) smoothers from Pohansko/B, Moravia. (Drawings: 1:2) slightly raised, oval area enclosed by the oxbow bends of the Dyje River. In addition to sporadic occupation from the Eneolithic, late La T ène, and Roman periods, a total of 120 settlement features and 50 inhumation graves from the early Middle Ages have been found, mainly from the Great Moravian period. Between 2008 and 2011, a second Great Moravian church in Pohansko was uncovered and explored in the western part of the NE Suburb. The church is in the form of a rotunda with an adjoining burial ground that contains more than 135 graves. Five graves were located inside the church, a space reserved for the highest social orders during the early Middle Ages. The presence of the Great Moravian elite in the NE Suburb is also demonstrated by jewelry made of precious metals in graves, items of equestrian equipment, a gaming stone, and bones of game animals. 73 It is hardly surprising that the most numerous inds of glass from Pohansko /B came from the NE Suburb.35 A fragment from Site 087 made of pure light blue glass was distorted by heat, so the type of vessel cannot be determined (Fig. 7.6).36 A large bottle with a conical neck (H. more than 7 cm, D. [body] about 16 cm) is of uncertain age. Although the fragments of the neck may be glued together, one of them is covered with a strong layer of corrosion and the other has only pit corrosion. The glass is bright green with occasional bubbles, and of unknown composition: the piece for analysis was probably taken from an unsuitable sample (Fig. 7.9 and Table, A 07).37 Two linen smoothers were also found in the NE Suburb. One consists of a fragment (D. about 8.4 cm) with a smooth base and ine oblique lines on the top. It was made of soda-lime glass tinted blue-green by copper. The glass is full of small bubbles (Fig. 7.10 and Table, A 08).38 Half of the other smoother (D. 8.2 cm) is covered with a layer of corrosion (Th. [max.] 0.8 cm), under which is the original light green wood-ash glass (Fig. 7.11 and Table, A 09).39 A rim fragment of a funnel beaker (D. about 8.0 cm) made of light greenish soda-lime glass came from Site 113, in the Forest Nursery, a place sometimes referred to as the craftsmen’s quarter (Fig. 7.7 and Table, A 06).40 The large number and variety of tools, uninished products, raw materials, and slag found there indicate the industrial character of this part of the site. In a group of four features (12, 109, 110, and 113) in the Forest Nursery, feature 113 may be interpreted as a metalworking area.41 Another ind was made in a humus layer beneath the fortiication in the area of the Eastern Gate (cross section XVII).42 A fragment of a globular(?) beaker decorated with a crisscross pattern of two intersecting trails is made of bluegreen soda-lime glass with a high content of calcium, colored by iron and titanium (Fig. 7.8 and Table, A 05).43 The fortiication has been given a preliminary dating, based on dendrochronological analysis of a piece of carbonized wood from its structure, to the period after 881.44 The 74 inds underneath the fortiication (including the glass vessel fragment) are thus possibly older. A collection of glass from Uherské Hradiště– Sady was acquired during archaeological research in the “Church Upland” in Sady in the 1950s and 1960s.45 In the ninth century, an extensive settlement, probably called Veligrad (which means big or important castle or town), was located where the modern towns of Staré Město and Uherské Hradiště now stand. A fortiied town was located on both sides of the Morava River, at an intersection of several trade routes. The amber trade route connecting northern and southern Europe crossed this territory. The town contained several churches and palaces built of brick, places where craftsmen lived and worked, a central cemetery with at least 2,000 graves in Staré Město’s “Na Valách” burial ground, and several smaller burial grounds. As many as several thousand inhabitants may have lived in Veligrad during the second half of the ninth century; it would have been a highly stratiied society, with princes, noblemen, and priests at its head.46 Vessel glass has been found at several places in the Staré Město – 35. The glass artifacts from the Magnate Court (a minimum of two items), which was undoubtedly the center of the whole agglomeration, can no longer be found. 36. Pohansko at Břeclav, no. P 121 193. 37. Pohansko at Břeclav, nos. P 149 074–075 and P 150 433. 38. Pohansko at Břeclav, no. P 95 309. 39. Pohansko at Břeclav, no number. 40. Pohansko at Břeclav, no. P 175 413; Macháček [note 30], pp. 65–430. 41. Macháček [note 30], pp. 291–292. 42. Dresler [note 31], pp. 69–72. 43. Pohansko at Břeclav, no. P 178 421. 44. Petr Dresler and others, “Dendrochronologické datování raně středověké aglomerace na Pohansku u Břeclavi,” in Zamě řeno na středověk: Zdeňkovi Měřínskému k 60. narozeninám. Prague: Lidové Noviny, 2010, pp. 112–138 and 750–752. 45. Systematic investigation of the agglomeration Uherské Hradiště–Staré Město is being conducted by the Moravian Museum in Brno. 46. Vilém Hrubý, Staré Město, velkomoravský Velehrad, Prague: Academia, 1965; Luděk Galuška, “Die grossmährische Siedlungsagglomeration Staré Město–Uherské Hradiště und ihre Befestigungen,” in Frühmittelalterlicher Burgenbau in Mittel und Osteuropa, ed. Joachim Henning, Bonn: Habelt, 1998, pp. 341–348; idem, “Early Medieval Agglomeration Staré Město– Uherské Hradiště = Great Moravian Veligrad,” Quaestiones Me dii Aevi Novae (Warsaw), v. 13, 2008, pp. 45–61. Uherské Hradiště agglomeration, although only the group from around the area now known as Sady has been studied in detail. Additional inds await study, including material from glass workshops in Staré Město, the “St. Vitus” site,47 graves from the Na Valách burial ground, and from the settlement area in the town of Uherské Hradiště.48 On the high ground of Uherské Hradiště– Sady above the Olšava River, clearly dominating the surrounding settlement, remnants of a central Christian area were investigated. Its beginnings date to the time of the irst Christian conversion of the Slavs who settled north of the central Danube, around the beginning of the ninth century. At that time, clergy from Bavaria and Aquileia built a church with a cruciform plan, the interior of which was plastered and painted, and with a tile roof of Roman character. A narthex of the Byzantine type was added to the western part of the church around 864– 869, a project probably associated with the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius to the population of Moravia. One part of the narthex has been interpreted as housing a school. Probably after the end of 873, following the return of Methodius as bishop over the Slavic countries, a side chapel was built in the Sady church, originally serving as his oratory. It is possible that the complex in Uherské Hradiště–Sady was the “high cathedral” of the Holy Moravian Church (i.e., the seat of Archbishop Methodius) in the 880s, and it was there that the Byzantine-Slavic liturgy was developed. Some parts of the church and the chapel continued to function after the fall of the Great Moravian empire, in the 10th to 12th centuries, during the Bohemian Přemyslid dynasty. During that period, nearly a thousand people from surrounding villages and settlements were buried in the church surroundings.49 Apparently, bits of ninth-century glass were present in the soil that was used to ill much later burial sites. In terms of glass, only a fragment of a lat plate from Grave 142/59 has been published to date from the whole complex.50 A survey has revealed, however, that the collection of inds consists of 25 fragments of vessels, four fragments of lat glass, and one tessera.51 The inds were made in the church and the chapel and in graves inside these buildings, as well as in settlement sites to the north of the church, the area of the wooden palace to the south of it, and several later graves outside the church (Fig. 8). Two fragments came from layers in the oldest part of the Sady church. One is from a windowpane with three original grozed sides and, on its inner side, decoration of brownish red silver and copper stain (23 x 23 x 2.5 mm). Its light bluegreen soda-lime glass contains numerous small bubbles (Fig. 9.1).52 A small fragment of bright blue soda-lime glass colored with copper and cobalt was part of a vessel that was probably cylindrical (22 x 19 x 0.8 mm). Geometric goldfoil decoration survives in negative imprint on the exterior of this fragment: there is a small 47. Kristina Marešová, “Záchranný výzkum velkomoravského Starého Města v roce 1978,” Časopis Moravského mu zea vědy společenské (Brno), v. 64, 1979, pp. 287–288. 48. Robert Snášil and Rudolf Procházka, “Archeologický výzkum v Uherském Hradišti v roce 1983,” in Přehled výzkumů 1982, Brno: Archeologický ústav ČSAV Brno, 1984, p. 63. 49. Luděk Galuška, Uherské Hradiště–Sady: Křest’anské cen trum Říše velkomoravské = Uherské Hradiště–Sady: Christian Center of the Great Moravian Empire, Brno: Moravské Zemské Muzeum, 1996; idem, “Christianity in Great Moravia and Its Centre in Uherské Hradiště–Sady (Kotvice),” Byzantinoslavi ca, v. 59, no. 1, 1998, pp. 161–180; idem, “Die grossmährische Siedlungsagglomeration von Staré Město–Uherské Hradiště (Mähren) = Uherské Hradiště–Sady, Kirchenkomplex und Erzbischofsitz,” in Frühmittelalterliche Wandmalerein aus Mähren und der Slowakei, Innsbruck: Wagner, 2008, pp. 47–62; Vladimír Vavřínek, “Study of the Church Architecture from the Period of the Great Moravian Empire,” Byzantinoslavica, v. 25, 1964, pp. 167–211. 50. Galuška, Uherské [note 49], pp. 135–136, ig. 85.8. 51. Luděk Galuška, Hedvika Sedláčková, and Karl Hans Wedepohl, “Hollow and Window Glass from the Ninth Century (Great Moravian Period) in Staré Město–Uherské Hradiště– Sady, Moravia,” poster presented at the 18th Congress of the Association Internationale pour l’Histoire du Verre, Thessaloniki, 2009. 52. See Karl Hans Wedepohl, “Carolingian Glass from Staré Město–Sady (Moravia, Czech Republic),” in this volume, p. 94, Table, A 01. 75 FIG. 8. Veligrad in the second half of the ninth cen tury: (A) church with annexes and burial ground, (B) settlement, and (C) wooden palace. Glass was found in church (A) and secular (B, C) locations. Construc tions are from the period of Great Moravia (yellow), from graves dating from that period (red), and from graves from the period following Great Moravia (10th–12th centuries, green). rhombus below a horizontal line (W. 2 mm). The glass is pure, with many small bubbles. While most of the surface is shiny, the area that had been under the foil is slightly rough (Fig. 9.2).53 Two additional glass inds were uncovered in the graves in the chapel and the narthex. The irst is from Grave 12/59 in the chapel. This is one of the most important graves, not only in Uherské Hradiště–Staré Město, but also in the entire territory of the Great Moravian empire. A male, age 45 to 50, whose clothing was adorned with golden buttons, was laid to rest in a wood coin held together with iron straps and nails. The tomb was originally covered by a sandstone slab, which for the most part had 76 fallen into the grave and was plastered and painted in Byzantine style. The left half of what was probably the man’s face survives. The grave has been dated to the last third of the ninth century and has been hypothetically associated with Prince /King Svatopluk.54 The grave also contained a fragment of red glass, put there at the time of the funeral, probably as a votive ofering. It came from the upper part of the discoid base 53. Ibid., Table, A 08. 54. Galuška, Uherské [note 49], p. 134; idem, “K otázce hrobu knížete Svatopluka = Zur Frage des Grabes des grossmährischen fürsten Svatopluk,” in Svätopluk 894–1994, Nitra: Archeologický ústav SAV, 1996, pp. 53–63. of a goblet lamp and consists of lead glass with a low calcium content, without bubbles, and of a distinct pink color (Fig. 9.4).55 The second piece of glass came from Grave 142/59 in the narthex, where a nobleman was buried with, among other things, a small fragment of a thin-walled plate of yellow-tinted colorless glass where the belt would have been (probably in a pouch) (Fig. 9.5). The fragment may have come from an antique vessel, or was perhaps part of an amulet. This grave had been covered by other burials during the 10th to 12th centuries. A fragment of crown glass was found inside the chapel. Judging by its form and composition, it is late Gothic to early Renaissance in origin. It has optical rib decoration, is made of blue ash glass, and merits no further description here (Fig. 9.3).56 The main part of the settlement consisted of spacious houses. Glass was found in features II, VIII, IX, X, and XI. Structures II, IX, and XI were houses; VIII was a well at the time of Great Moravia; and X was a smithy. The principal inds were made in House II. They include a lead pendant cross with the Greek inscription “ZOE–IESUS–CHRISTOS–NIKA– FOS” (Life–Jesus–Christ–Victory–Light),57 a leafshaped pendant, and styluses of bone and iron for writing.58 Also found there were two fragments of glass, which may have come from a single vessel, and one tessera. The irst vessel fragment is from a rounded body. Irregular dark red trails colored with copper were applied to almost colorless soda-lime glass with a green tint (Fig. 9.6).59 A handle with a circular cross section (D. 0.3 cm), only half of which has survived, is attached to the other fragment. A dark red trail lies where the handle joins the body (Fig. 9.7). The opinion that both fragments are part of one vessel is based on the nature of the glass itself: The handle appears to indicate that it was a hanging lamp; the tessera is made of colorless soda-lime glass (Fig. 9.8).60 One fragment of glass was found in one of the Houses IX–XI, and another in Well VIII.61 The irst is a small fragment of a vessel not easily identiied, made of transparent colorless glass with a greenish tint and a few bubbles (Fig. 9.10). The second fragment came from a discoid base, somewhere near the stem, and is made of transparent colorless glass with a yellow-green tint. The surface is matte and pitted (Fig. 9.9). This fragment is from a goblet lamp. Four glass fragments were recovered from Smithy X. Particularly notable is a fragment of the slightly conical neck of a small bottle. The bottle was made of transparent, nearly colorless wood-ash glass with a high content of sodium oxide (Fig. 9.11).62 On its exterior appears an engraved “X” consisting of a double line from the upper left to lower right (i.e., a backslash, or reverse solidus) that terminates in a right-facing serif. A small engraved cross can be seen above and to the right of the lower-left to upper-right line (a forward slash, or solidus). Examination of these engraved lines under the microscope conirms that the marks are deliberate, probably done with a sharp metal engraving tool: the lines consist of many small transverse half-arcs, made when the engraver scratched a series of very minute “ticks” on the glass surface. Two other fragments came from a bowllike lamp: one is approximately a quarter of the lamp’s lat 55. Wedepohl [note 52], Table, A 02. 56. For more detail on this fragment, see Galuška, Sedláčková, and Wedepohl [note 51], analysis A 10: the pane is of an extraordinary composition. It is high in potassium (18.07% K2O) but too low in calcium (8.05% CaO) and magnesium (0.20% MgO) to be a wood-ash glass. In early post-medieval times, certain glasshouses in central Europe dissolved potassium and other soluble constituents of wood ash and evaporated this solution to obtain a lux for glass low in iron. Glass A 10 may be such a potash glass colored blue by 0.03% Co and 0.03% Cu. For analogical inds from the 15th century in Cvilín and Brno, see Hedvika Sedláčková, “From the Gothic Period to the Renaissance: Glass in Moravia, 1450–circa 1560,” in Studies in PostMedieval Archaeology, v. 2, ed. Jaromír Žegklitz, Prague: Archaia, 2009, pp. 181–226; and Katalina H. Gyürky, Az uveg katalógus, Budapest, 1986, ig. XLV (bottom). 57. Galuška, Uherské [note 49], p. 140. 58. Radislav Hošek, “První řecký nápis na Moravě,” in Al manach Velká Morava, Brno: Moravské Muzeum, 1965, p. 140. 59. Wedepohl [note 52], Table, A 07. 60. Ibid., Table, A 09. 61. Galuška, Uherské [note 49], p. 141. 62. Wedepohl [note 52], Table, A 05. 77 9.1 (Table, A 01) 9.2 (Table, A 08) 9.3 9.4 (Table, A 02) 9.5 9.6 (Table, A 07) 9.7 9.8 (Table, A 09) 9.9 (Table, A 02) 9.10 FIG. 9. (1 and 2) Windowpane and fragment of gilded beaker (oldest part of the church), (3) Renaissance window glass (chapel), (4) fragment of discoid base of goblet lamp (chapel, Grave 12/59), (5) lat glass (oldest part of the church, Grave 142/59), (6 and 7) fragments of hanging lamp, (8) tesserae (House II/61), (9) fragment of lamp(?) (House IX–XI/61), and (10) fragment of discoid base of goblet lamp (Well VIII/61), from Uherské Hradiště–Staré Město–Sady, Moravia. (Drawings: 1:2) 78 9.11 (Table, A 05) 9.12 9.13 9.14 FIG. 9 (continued). (11) Fragment of neck of small bottle with engraved Greek letter “X” and cross, (12 and 13) fragments of lamps, and (14) fragment of lat glass (Smithy X/61) from Uherské Hradiště–Staré Město–Sady, Moravia. (Drawings: 1:2) bottom, and the other appears to be the start of the vessel’s rounded body and probably a small part of the body itself. In both of these fragments, the glass is colorless with a green tint and includes bubbles, along with several unfused particles (Fig. 9.12 and 9.13). The last piece is a fragment of a thin-walled pane made of colorless greenish glass; its surface is covered in pearly corrosion (Fig. 9.14). The largest group of glass fragments—11 of them—came from a wooden palace (L. 36 m) that once stood to the south of the complex of walled church buildings during the second half of the ninth century. This structure must have been the dwelling of a person of the highest rank, perhaps Archbishop Methodius himself, and likely served as a communal building with eight small, cell-like rooms. The glass fragments were found throughout the building, which did not survive the fall of Great Moravia at the beginning of the 10th century. Any glass from the area of the building, as well as that of the settlement, should date to the ninth century at the latest. The glass in this group consists of small fragments. From a goblet lamp came a piece of the discoid base (D. 5.2 cm) with a tubular foot-ring (Fig. 10.20), and a body fragment with parts of the wall and the handle (Fig. 10.21). Three rim fragments (D. about 7.0, 7.0, and 9.0 cm) may have come from bowllike lamps (Fig. 10.23– 10.25). Five fragments with rounded bodies may be considered, with reservation, as parts of goblet or bowllike lamps (Fig. 10.16–10.19 and 79 10.15 10.16 10.17 10.18 10.19 10.20 10.21 10.22 10.23 FIG. 10. (15) Fragment of vessel with octagonal(?) body, (16 and 22) fragments of blue glass vessels, (17–19) fragments of bodies of lamps, (20) fragment of discoid base of lamp, (21) fragment of bottle with handle, and (23) fragment of lamp rim (wooden palace) from Uherské Hradiště–Staré Město–Sady, Moravia. (Drawings: 1:2) 80 10.24 10.25 10.26 10.28 10.27 10.30 10.29 FIG. 10 (continued). (24 and 25) Fragments of lamp rims (wooden palace), (26) fragment of discoid base of goblet lamp (Grave 5/59), (27) fragment of silverstained vessel (Grave 26/60), (28) fragment of a lamp(?) (Grave 42/61), (29) fragment of vessel with architectural motif (Grave 66/59), and (30) fragment of lamp(?) (Grave 67/61) from Uherské Hradiště–Staré Město–Sady, Moravia. (Drawings: 1:2) 81 10.22). The inal fragment, of colorless glass with corrosion on the surface, may, to judge by its curvature, have come from a many-sided vessel (Fig. 10.15). Two fragments are of transparent light blue and deep blue glass (Fig. 10.16 and 10.22); others are of colorless glass with a greenish tint and bubbles. Although no fragment from this series has been analyzed, the marked corrosion on the bottle with a handle and the many-sided vessel indicates that they may consist of wood-ash glass. Glass fragments found in Graves 5/59, 26/60, 42/61, 66/59, and 67/61 date from after the fall of Great Moravia. These graves were uncovered in close proximity to the church, and it is likely that the glass found in them came from accidental admixtures of the surrounding soil. Only the ind from Grave 67/61 may be interpreted as a grave gift, but even in this case it is clear that fragments of vessels that were in use during the time of Great Moravia—that is, in the ninth century—made their way into this grave, and into others. Grave 5/59, a female burial located to the south of the church, contained a fragment of a goblet lamp, a discoid base with a tubular footring (D. about 7.2 cm). The glass is dark blue with a rough surface (Fig. 10.26). The grave is dated to about the beginning of the 12th century by the presence of a denarius minted for Prince Otakar the Fair of the Przemyslid dynasty. The grave also contained silver-gilt earrings behind the corpse’s ear. Grave 26/61, holding the remains of a child, contained no grave gifts, but did yield a small, slightly rounded fragment of blue silver-stained glass dropped into the soil ill, probably as an intrusion from the surrounding earth. The glass is of soda-lime composition, colored with copper (Fig. 10.27).63 A small fragment of a rounded lamp body, made of colorless glass with a green tint (Fig. 10.28), was found in Grave 42/61, located about 10 meters to the northeast of the presbytery. This fragment appeared in the illing above the legs of the skeleton, along with fragments of roof cover dating to the ninth century. 82 Grave 66/59, very close to the east presbytery wall, contained the remains of a small girl with a pair of S-shaped bronze earrings on her skull. In the grave illing were pieces of plaster and a fragment of early blue wood-ash glass colored by the addition of a Roman tessera. Its applied decoration consists of opaque white glass with a high lead and tin content, a combination unknown from western Europe until this time. An architectural motif, a column and its base, and an arcade are all visible on this piece, but no other elements are discernible (Fig. 10.29).64 In the last grave to contain glass, 67/61, stones had been laid, partly surrounding the grave site. A piece of glass, probably from a purse or a pocket, appeared near the waist of the male corpse. The glass, probably from a lamp, was in the form of an amulet or a piece of ancient glass, and was likely to have come from the settlement. This fragment was the only funeral gift in the grave. It is made of colorless soda-lime glass with a green tint (Fig. 10.30).65 All of these fragments came from vessels that were in use during the Great Moravian period, about 830 to 907. Although there may be some objections to this statement, based on the somewhat inconclusive circumstances surrounding the inds, as well as the incomplete documentation of work performed half a century ago, their attribution to the ninth century is supported by the following evidence: (1) Typological analysis and dating of similar vessels; (2) The scarcity of glass vessels in 10th- to 12th-century Europe north of the Alps; and (3) The fact that this locality completely lacked social importance after the early 10th century, meaning that neither the social nor the economic environment survived in which such luxurious goods could occur. Vessel glass in the Czech lands in the 11th and 12th centuries has 63. Ibid., Table, A 03. 64. Ibid., Table, A 04. 65. Ibid., Table, A 06. been demonstrated only for Prague Castle66 and in the stately home of the Przemyslid family in Žatec.67 EVALUATION The glass described above consists of some 100 fragmentary specimens, mainly from vessels. Although quantities difer sharply—two examples from Olomouc to six dozen from Mikulčice—two groups may be distinguished according to type of vessel. The indings from Bojná, Kolín, Mikulčice, Olomouc, Pohansko/B, and Pohansko/N may be assigned to group 1, and those from Uherské Hradiště–Sady to group 2. Funnel Beakers In the range of items from the larger group of localities, two main forms of Carolingian glass, funnel beakers and globular beakers, are found most frequently. To the body fragment and funnel beaker fragments from Mikulčice may be added a small rim fragment from Pohansko/B and, in all probability, fragments from Bojná (Figs. 3, 7.3, and 7.7). Most of these were made of colorless to greenish glass with no trace of decoration; only in Mikulčice were there single specimens of blue and violet color, and one example was decorated with a yellow trail under the rim. In the ninth and 10th centuries, funnel beakers were common in Holland, England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany.68 Their production, as well as the production of other types of vessels known from northwestern Europe—and now from Great Moravia—has been demonstrated at the glasshouse in Cordel near Trier69 and at San Vincenzo al Volturno.70 Globular Beakers The second form to appear relatively frequently in Great Moravian indspots consists of globular beakers with inturned rims. A particular variant may be determined in the case of beakers with applied crisscross decoration. An idea of the complete form may be derived from three whole vessels: one from Grave 739 in Birka,71 and the others from graves in Kolín and Pohansko /N (Fig. 2.1 and 2.3). The beakers from Birka and Pohansko/N are about the same size (H. 8 and 8.2 cm) and are made of light green glass, while the beaker from Kolín is smaller (H. 7 cm) and made of light blue-green glass. The fragment of the beaker from Bojná is made of light blue glass, the one from Mikulčice of light green glass, and that from Pohansko/B of blue-green glass (Figs. 7.4, 7.8, and 4.73). Two more fragments with thick horizontal trails of blue and greenish glass from Mikulčice, as well as several body fragments with horizontal ine trails, may have come from the same beakers (Fig. 4.36 and 4.46). On the complete beakers, the trail was applied horizontally under the rim, which is also the thickest part. On the beaker from Birka, a thin, narrow trail was wound on the rim, separate from the decoration on the body. The fragment from a beaker made of strongly colored green glass with an externally thickened rim and two rows of opaque white glass on the neck (Fig. 4.108) corresponds in color to a glass fragment with crossed trails made of opaque 66. Ivana Boháčová and others, “Příspěvek k poznání života a životního prostředí na Pražském hradě a Hradčanech = Ein Beitrag zur Kenntniss des Lebens und der Umwelt auf der Prager Burg und in Hradčany,” Archeologia Historica (Brno), v. 15, 1990, pp. 177–189. 67. Eva Černá, “Nálezy středověkého skla ze Žatce1 = Mittelalterliche Glasfunde in Žatec (Saaz),” in Sborník Západočes kého Muzea v Plzni Historie, ed. Milan Metlička, v. 18, Plzeň: Západočeské Muzeum, 2007, pp. 17–19, ig. 8.3, .5, .6, and .8. 68. Peter Steppuhn, Die Glasfunde von Haithabu, Berichte über die Ausgrabungen in Haithabu, v. 32, Neumünster: Wachholtz, 1998, p. 59 and n. 125; Vera Evison, “Glass Vessels in England, AD 400–1100,” in Glass in Britain and Ireland, AD 350–1100, ed. Jennifer Price, London: British Museum, 2000, pp. 79–88. 69. Holger Arbman, Schweden und das karolingische Reich, Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1937, pp. 28–30. 70. Judy Stevenson, “Ninth Century Glassware Production at San Vincenzo al Volturno, Italy: Some New Evidence from Recent Excavation,” in Material Culture in Medieval Europe, ed. Guy De Boe and Frans Verhaeghe, 1997, pp. 132–133. 71. Arbman [note 69], pp. 48–49, pl. 9.1. 83 were Merovingian vessels of various forms.73 In Viking contexts, apart from the beaker from Birka, there is a fragment made of completely colorless glass from the trade center of Dorestad in the Netherlands.74 Several globular beakers with this decoration have also been recorded in England, and date from the late sixth and seventh centuries;75 the same decoration appears on a ninth-century funnel beaker from Birka.76 The second region in which this crisscross decoration is found is Great Moravia, with specimens from Bojná, Kolín, Mikulčice (among others), Pohansko/B, and Pohansko/N. To the south, a similarly decorated vessel came from a grave in Mejici, near Buzeta, in Istria, Croatia;77 another example is the fragment from Farfa Abbey.78 A bowl with this decoration in greenish glass, the rim of which is folded outward to form a tubular lip, came from Finale Ligure in Italy and dates to the seventh or eighth century.79 Bowl FIG. 11. Localities with beakers with applied net dec oration: (1) Birka, Sweden; (2) Bojná, Slovakia; (3) Dorestad, the Netherlands; (4) Lazio, Italy; (5) Fi nale Ligure, Italy; (6) Kolín, Bohemia; (7) Mikulčice, Moravia; (8) Melica u Buzeta, Istria; (9) Pohansko at Břeclav, Moravia; and (10) Pohansko at Nejdek, Mo ravia. white glass from Farfa Abbey in Lazio, central Italy.72 Four fragments of plain, slightly inturned rims made of greenish and blue glass (Fig. 4.31, 4.51, 4.65, and 4.82) from Mikulčice came from beakers with no other diagnostic features. To date, beakers with applied crisscross decoration are known from two widely separated regions: northern Europe and central and southern Europe (Fig. 11). According to Holger Arbman, in the ninth and 10th centuries this decoration should be associated with the Roman glassmaking tradition; its direct predecessors 84 A lat bowl from Kolín, with its rim folded externally to form a tube, is exceptional (Fig. 2.2). Bowls were part of the repertoire of Carolingian glass, but they were rare. The best-known 72. Martine S. Newby, “The Glass from Farfa Abbey: An Interim Report,” Journal of Glass Studies, v. 33, 1991, pp. 32– 41, esp. p. 36, ig. 4. 73. Arbman [note 69], pp. 77–78. 74. Ibid., pp. 50–51, pl. 6.11. 75. Vera I. Evison, Catalogue of AngloSaxon Glass in The British Museum, London: the museum, and Oakville, Connecticut: David Brown Book Co., 2008, nos. 149, 150, and 152. 76. Arbman [note 69], Grave 551, p. 40. 77. Branko Marušič, Istria v ranom strednjem vjeku, Pula, Croatia, 1960, p. 20, ig. 1.1 (bowllike vessel with one row of crossed trails). 78. Newby [note 72]. 79. Carlo Falcetti, “La suppellettile in vetro del VI–VII secolo d.C. da uno sito fortiicato ligure: Sant’Antonino di Perti,” in La circolazione del vetro in Liguria: Produzione e difusione, ed. Daniela Ferrari and Bruno Massabò, Imola (Bologna): La Mandragora, 2000, p. 65, ig. 2.23; idem, Rilessi del Passato: Vetri da scavi archeologici nel Finale, Catalogo della mostra, Finale Ligure: Museo Archeologico del Finale–Chiostri di S. Caterina Finale Ligure Borgo SV, 13 settembre 2003–11 gennaio 2004, pp. 6 and 7, no. 10. examples, with hemispherical bodies and reti cello decoration, came from Valsgårde, Sweden, and Dorestad, the Netherlands.80 A bowl on a hollow, bell-shaped foot of emerald-green glass from Farfa Abbey may also be Carolingian.81 Unlike these luxurious vessels, the Kolín bowl is simple and, at present, without parallel. Similar shapes may be found in Roman glass of the irst to fourth centuries, some of which have an identical rim: a tube, created by external folding.82 From the fourth to sixth centuries, bowls with tubular rims played an important part in the glass of the Byzantine east, whereas they are almost unknown in the post-Roman glass output of the former Western empire.83 Alexander Pöche has associated early medieval tubular-rimmed vessels from northwestern Europe with the products of an eighth- to ninthcentury commercial center in Gross Strömkendorf, northern Germany.84 He maintained that such rims are characteristic of vessels from around the end of the seventh century; bowls from Valsgårde and Dorestad are eighth-century; in Ribe /Denmark they appear in the layers from around the end of the eighth century.85 The tubular rim also appeared in Mikulčice (Fig. 4.85). According to this criterion, the bowl from Kolín might be much earlier, but its composition, with an unusually high content of potassium oxide, is identical with that of the beaker with a crisscross pattern of trails from the same grave, as well as with a fragment from Bojná (Table, A 01, A 03, and A 04). No funnel beakers or globular beakers were found in Uherské Hradiště–Sady. Bottles Bottles are represented by several fragments in Mikulčice, Olomouc, Pohansko /B, and Uherské Hradiště–Sady. A small fragment from Mikulčice of a cylindrical neck made of mediumblue glass with two opaque white trails (Fig. 5.83) is reminiscent of a special group of blue glass with opaque white decoration, but such indings, which include bottles, date to the 11th century.86 Part of a rounded shoulder in slightly greenish soda-lime glass is all that remains of a small bottle from Olomouc (Fig. 7.1), while the dating of a bottle from Pohansko/B is uncertain (Fig. 7.9). Two fragments of bottles were found in Uherské Hradiště–Sady. One, found in a hall building, is from a large bottle, part of a neck(?) with a sizable handle (Fig. 10.21); the other is from the conical neck of a small bottle in early woodash glass from Smithy X (Fig. 9.11). The letter “X” is very probably the irst letter of the name “XPICTOC” (KRISTOS). Although a very similar “X” with a small cross appears on a metal cross from House II, no similar inscription had ever been found on glass. Lamps Lamps of two or three types form a group of inds from Mikulčice and Uherské Hradiště– Sady. The lower part of a lamp from Mikulčice has already been published.87 It is made of light green soda-lime glass with many bubbles. Its solid stem was created by tooling the glass while it was still hot; the stem ends in a bulb (Fig. 5.89). The lamp classiication includes the hanging variant with a bowllike upper part and a narrow, hollow 80. Erwin Baumgartner and Ingeborg Krueger, Phönix aus Sand und Asche: Glas des Mittelalters, Munich: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1988, pp. 70–71, nos. 12–14. 81. Newby [note 72], p. 25, ig. 5a. 82. Clasina Isings, Roman Glass from Dated Finds, Groningen–Djakarta: J. B. Wolters, 1957, no. 19. 83. Renate Pirling, “Die römischen und byzantinischen Glasfunde von Apamea in Syrien,” Annales du 7 e Congrès Interna tional d’Etude Historique du Verre, Berlin–Leipzig, 1977 (Liège, 1978), pp. 143 and 145, ig. 4. 84. Alexander Pöche, Perlen, Trichtergläser, Tesserae: Spuren des Glashandels und Glashandwerks auf dem frühgeschichtli chen Handelsplatz von Gross Strömkendorf, Landkreis Nord westmecklenburg, Beiträge zur Ur- und Frühgeschichte Mecklenburg-Vorpommerns (Schwerin), v. 44, 2005, pp. 25 and 26, ig. 7.1a, b (rims folded out and in). 85. Ibid., p. 26, nn. 109–113. 86. Baumgartner and Krueger [note 80], pp. 78–80, esp. no. 26a. 87. Himmelová, “Glasfunde” [note 9], no. 89, ig. 9.7, table, 2.89. 85 stem, which appeared in the Mediterranean region after the ifth century. Lamps with entirely smooth or screw-shaped stems with bulbous ends also appeared in the eastern Mediterranean. In the typology of lamps from Bet Shean, Israel, type 2 was in use from before the mideighth century to the 12th century; among the analogies given, the inds from Fustat, Egypt, and Samarra, Iraq, are closest to the Mikulčice lamp in terms of date.88 Solid-stem lamps are not common in Europe; Marina Uboldi notes two examples from Italy and assigned them to her type IV.1,89 while a similar lamp comes from Mainz, Germany.90 What have become known as goblet lamps appeared in Uherské Hradiště–Sady and probably also in Mikulčice. These are represented by fragments of slightly conical bases. Although four fragments from Mikulčice were originally classiied as Roman glass from the irst through fourth centuries, this type was in use from the late fourth century onward.91 The fragments came from bases with tubular foot-rings (D. 3.5–6 cm) and were made of slightly greenish glass (Fig. 5.4, 5.5, 5.10, and 5.70). The probability that these lamps are from the ninth century increases because the three fragments were found in Church V, and one was a grave gift beside the neck of the corpse in Grave 1274. Outside the church, the only glass found to date is a funnel beaker fragment from Basilica III (Fig. 3.3). Other fragments came from features or layers in the settlement. Four fragments of discoid bases came from Uherské Hradiště–Sady: colorless glass from Well VIII and from the wooden palace (Figs. 9.10 and 10.20), a fragment of pink lead glass from Grave 12 (Fig. 9.4), and a tubular footring of a goblet lamp made of blue glass from Grave 5, which is later (Fig. 10.26). Less certain is the identity of three small rim fragments from the hall-type building: they may have come either from hanging lamps with round bodies or from goblet lamps (Fig. 10.23–10.25). The only ind that may be interpreted with certainty as a hanging lamp consists of fragments of a vessel with irregular red trails and a 86 handle from Uherské Hradiště–Sady (Fig. 9.6 and 9.7, House II). It is highly probable that the fragment of a lat bottom with a small part of the body came from a hanging bowllike lamp with a round body (Fig. 9.12 and 9.13, Smithy X). Some small, slightly rounded body fragments may be classiied as types 1 or 2 (Fig. 9.9, House IX–XI; Fig. 9.13 and 9.14, Smithy X; Fig. 10.16–10.19 and 10.22, wooden palace; and Fig. 10.30, Grave 67).92 Goblet lamps with a solid or hollow stem and a discoid base were basic types of Byzantine glass in the Mediterranean region, especially in its eastern and central parts, between the late fourth and ninth centuries. They are very rare north of the Alps: to six specimens mentioned by Donald B. Harden93 and David Whitehouse94 may be added two grave inds from ifth-century Moravia95 and Slovakia.96 These lamps are mostly made of colorless, slightly bluish, or bluegreen glass; a pink lead glass lamp is exceptional. Goblet lamp feet are found in the ninthcentury material from the glass workshop at San 88. Shulamit Hadad, “Glass Lamps from the Byzantine through Mamluk Periods at Bet Shean, Israel,” Journal of Glass Studies, v. 40, 1998, pp. 63–76, esp. p. 68, ig. 2. 89. Marina Uboldi, “Difusione delle lampade vitree in età tardoantica e altomedievale e spunti per una tipologia,” Ar cheologia Medievale, v. 22, 1995, pp. 120–121, ig. 5.28, .29. 90. Franz Rademacher, Die deutschen Gläser des Mittelal ters, Berlin: Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1933, table, 18c. 91. Isings [note 82], no. 111. 92. Hadad [note 88]. 93. Donald B. Harden, “Some Lombard Glasses of the 6th and 7th Centuries,” in Verre médiéval aux Balkans (V e–XV e s.), ed. Verena Han, Belgrade: Academie Serbe des Sciences et des Arts Institut des Etudes Balkaniques, 1975, p. 23, no. 3. 94. David Whitehouse, Roman Glass in The Corning Muse um of Glass, v. 1, Corning: the museum, 1997, pp. 103–104, no. 154. 95. Brno: Černé pole: Germanen Hunnen und Awaren, ed. Gerhard Boot, Nuremberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 1988, p. 373, no. 12. 96. Čataj: Jozef Zábojník, “Das Völkerwanderungszeitliche Gräberfeld von Čataj,” in Neue Beiträge zur Erforschung der Spätantike im mittleren Donauraum, ed. Jaroslav Tejral, Herwig Friesinger, and Michel Kazanski, Brno: Archäologisches Institut der Akademie der Wissenschaften der Tschechischen Republic, 1997, ig. 3.5. Vincenzo al Volturno97 and among the inds from Farfa Abbey.98 Beyond Italy, only the fragments from Uherské Hradiště–Sady, and probably Mikulčice, are known. Bowllike lamps are less frequent, although, in both cases, most of the inds are from ecclesiastical contexts.99 Until this point, the types of vessels described appeared in several localities. The vessels that follow, from Uherské Hradiště–Sady, are exceptional both in material and in type. Two of the lamps already mentioned have attractive applied decoration. The pink lead glass fragment, its unusual color possibly symbolizing blood and life, was put in the most important grave in Great Moravia. No contemporaneous analogies have been found for either the glass color or its composition. For the sake of completeness, it should be mentioned that a richly decorated globular Byzantine beaker and fragments of further vessels from Novogrudok, Belorussia, are made of glass of the same color,100 while the collections of the State Historical Museum in Moscow have a fragment of a vessel of the same color from Smolensk.101 However, both inds are dated to the 11th–12th centuries. A hanging lamp from House II is noteworthy because of its applied trails of transparent dark red to brown glass on a transparent pale greenish base glass. This is a variation on Byzantine lamps with handles attached to the wall.102 Striations of dark red glass, or made of glass of a color other than that of the vessel body, are among the specialties of Carolingian glass vessels and window glass. Such glass had been produced since late Merovingian times, especially in the eighth century.103 A bowl and a beaker are known from Dorestad, the Netherlands, around the beginning of the ninth century, and their luxurious character is accentuated by the presence of reticello ornament.104 From Haithabu came 11 vessel fragments with yellow, red, and blue trails on base glass, dating to the ninth– 10th centuries.105 Funnel beakers, globular beaker fragments, and an uninished sticklike object with red trails in the glass were found in the glass workshop in Cordel, near Trier,106 while a windowpane of green and blue glass with a red marbling efect came from San Vincenzo al Volturno.107 An exceptional vessel is represented by a fragment made of blue soda-lime glass with goldfoil decoration (Fig. 9.2). Beyond San Vincenzo and Uherské Hradiště–Sady, vessels decorated with gold foil (fragments of funnels and cylindrical beakers) are known from 13 localities in northwestern Europe and Sweden.108 The technique of applying the foil to the surface difers from that of the Hellenistic and Roman vessels in which gold-foil decoration was sandwiched between two fused layers of glass. Rough areas with decorative motifs, to which the foil was attached, are often all that remain on fragments from the end of the eighth century and the ninth century.109 97. Stevenson [note 70], igs. 6.2 and 7.2. 98. Newby [note 72], p. 35. 99. Anastasios Antonaras, “Early Christian Glass Finds from the Museum Basilica, Philippi,” Journal of Glass Studies, v. 49, 2007, pp. 47–56. 100. Frida Dawidowna Gurewitsch, Repsime Mikaelowna Djanpoladian, and Mariana Wladimirowna Malewskaja, Vo stočnoje steklo v Drevnej Rusi = Oriental Glass in Ancient Rus sia, Leningrad: Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Archaeological Institute, 1968, p. 19, “fine reddish violet glass,” figs. I and XI.7–.13. 101. Moscow, State Museum of History: Smolensk 71, no. Us XI-b, pl. 2, kv. 135, N 24, Npo 64. Thanks to Dr. Natalia Astaschowa for the opportunity to study the finds. 102. See, for example, B. Yelda Olcay, “Lighting Methods in the Byzantine Period and Findings of Glass Lamps in Anatolia,” Journal of Glass Studies, v. 43, 2001, pp. 77–87, esp. p. 84, fig. 5b, c. 103. Steppuhn [note 68], p. 63. 104. Dorestad: Baumgartner and Krueger [note 80], pp. 71– 72, nos. 14 and 16. 105. Steppuhn [note 68], p. 64, fig. 13.3–.5. 106. Arbman [note 69], pp. 30–33, fig. 1.4, pls. 1.1, .2, and 3.2. 107. Francesca Dell’Acqua, “Ninth-Century Window Glass from the Monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno (Molise, Italy),” Journal of Glass Studies, v. 39, 1997, pp. 33–41, esp. p. 36, figs. 5 and 6. 108. Pöche [note 84], pp. 35–36, fig. 14. 109. Baumgartner and Krueger [note 80], p. 65. 87 The production of such vessels has been demonstrated at the earlier glass workshop at the abbey of San Vincenzo al Volturno, which operated about 808 to 820. Finds from other parts of Europe, however, are dated between 700 and 900, most frequently to the end of the eighth century,110 so production in other workshops is not excluded. In view of the fact that our fragment was found in the oldest part of the church, the vessel could already have been there around the year 800. In the case of one small fragment, the vessel type cannot be determined with certainty, but it appears to have come from a large cylindrical beaker. The geometric decoration is typical of this type of vessel.111 The vessel type also cannot be determined in the case of the fragment with an architectural motif, made of blue early wood-ash glass (Fig. 10.29). Neither the motif nor the composition of the opaque white glass is known from other early medieval contexts. Furthermore, even if we accept an 11th-century date for this fragment (when the girl in Grave 66/59 was interred), which is highly improbable, the fragment does not belong in the group.112 In any case, to judge by the composition of the base glass, which was colored with cobalt by adding Roman mosaic cubes to the melt, this extremely luxurious vessel was produced in western Europe. Surprisingly, the small bottle with an “X” engraved on the neck was made of early woodash glass (Fig. 9.11). This is also a product of a glassworks in western Europe, where the earliest glass of this type appeared before the year 778 in the Carolingian Pfalz at Paderborn.113 Visual examination alone appears to indicate that both a fragment with part of a large handle and a small fragment of a multi-sided vessel body may also be made of wood-ash glass, although they are quite heavily corroded (Fig. 10.21 and 10.15, wooden palace). To judge by their high quality, the others are probably made of soda glass. What was probably a beaker is represented by a small body fragment with a single bend, probably deriving from a manysided shape for which no contemporaneous analogies are known. Many-sided beakers appeared only around the end of the 13th century in northern Germany.114 The fragment of a vessel made of blue sodalime glass with silver-stained decoration is unique in a European context (Fig. 10.27). It is probably from an earlier intrusion into Grave 26, where a child is interred. Stained glass production is presumed to have taken place in Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia (probably), and the Byzantine world between the eighth and 12th centuries. This type of decoration was irst applied to vessels of a range of types.115 110. Stevenson [note 70], p. 134. 111. E.g., Paderborn and Dorestad: Baumgartner and Krueger [note 80], pp. 66 and 68, nos. 7 and 10; and San Vincenzo: Stevenson [note 69], fig. 7.1. 112. Baumgartner and Krueger [note 80], pp. 77–80. 113. Karl Hans Wedepohl, Glas in Antike und Mittelalter: Geschichte eines Werkstoffs, Stuttgart: Schweizerbart’sche, 2003, p. 91. 114. Baumgartner and Krueger [note 80], pp. 104–105, no. 49. 115. David Whitehouse, Lisa Pilosi, and Mark T. Wypyski, “Byzantine Silver Stain,” Journal of Glass Studies, v. 42, 2000, pp. 85–96; Stefano Carboni, “Painted Glass,” in Glass of the Sultans, ed. Stefano Carboni and David Whitehouse, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with The Corning Museum of Glass, Benaki Museum, and Yale University Press, 2001, pp. 208–221, nos. 102–109. 88 Windowpanes and Flat Glass That the windows of some sacred buildings in Great Moravia were glazed is demonstrated by fragments of four windowpanes from Mikulčice, one from Uherské Hradiště–Sady, and one from Olomouc. Fragments from Mikulčice with grozed edges were concentrated in the fortiied hilltop. They are rectangular, trapezoidal, or lenticular in form, indicating quite a complicated stained glass composition (Fig. 5.115– 5.117 and 5.120). They are made of soda-lime glass; three of them are brown-yellow, and one is violet. Zdenka Himmelová proposed that they came from a glass workshop in Augsburg, where it is known that such window glass was produced.116 Similar lat glass also appears in recently published material from the glass workshop in Zalavár, Hungary.117 It seems more probable that it was brought to Mikulčice from the latter locality, which is closer than Augsburg, both geographically and culturally. Three fragments of lat glass come from Uherské Hradiště–Sady, from the interior of the earliest section of the church. Only part of a rectangular pane of blue-green soda-lime glass with geometric silver-stained decoration may be classiied as window glass (Fig. 9.1). The closest analogy in terms of territory, time, and culture came from a church in Zalavár, a region that was part of Great Moravia at the end of the ninth century. Here, more numerous and essentially larger fragments of panes with igural decoration (part of a face), and with a fragment of an inscription in capital letters,118 survive from the Church of Saint Hadrian. Another silverstained fragment, dated between the ninth and 11th centuries, was found in the Church of San Lorenzo in the Venetian lagoon. The window also has a igural scene, of which part of the face survives.119 Two very small undecorated fragments are made of colorless glass: one has a yellowish tint (Fig. 9.5, Grave 142), and the other has a greenish tint (Fig. 9.14, Smithy X). They came from very thin-walled (Th. 1.0–1.1 mm) plates and are therefore likely to have been among the contents of a cabinet or a reliquary. Their use 116. Himmelová, “Nález” [note 9], pp. 233–234. 117. Béla Miklós Szőke, Karl Hans Wedepohl, and Andreas Kronz, “Silver-Stained Windows at Carolingian Zalavár, Mosaburg (Southwestern Hungary),” Journal of Glass Studies, v. 46, 2004, pp. 85–104. 118. Ibid., fig. 4 (bottom). 119. Francesca Vaghi, Marco Verità, and Sandro Zecchin, “Silver Stain on Medieval Window Glass Excavated in the Venetian Lagoon,” Journal of Glass Studies, v. 46, 2004, pp. 105– 108. 120. Material is being prepared for publication by Luděk Galuška. in jewelry production cannot be ruled out, especially in the light of a small, thin-walled fragment of a circular disk found in the jewelry workshop in the “Na Dvorku” locality in Staré Město.120 The Olomouc windowpane fragment, made of lead-silica glass with trailed dark red decoration (Fig. 7.2 and Table, A 11), from what is assumed to be Saint Peter’s Church, has a composition very similar to that of the windowpanes from the Church of Saint Clement in Stará Boleslav, Bohemia, and in the fortiied settlement of the Přemysl family from the ninth to 10th centuries. In this case, it is assumed that the windowpanes were imported from Russia or Poland, where glass with a high lead content was produced.121 Small Objects Linen smoothers (D. 6–10 cm), interpreted mostly as instruments for the textile industry or for crushing salt or spices, were widespread in western Scandinavia and northeastern Europe from the seventh to 11th centuries.122 A conspicuous absence of such inds in central Europe was due to lack of knowledge; this was rectiied with 11 smoothers from Bojná (1 example), Mikulčice (8), and Pohansko/B (2). Most of them had a diameter of about 8 cm. All are from secular contexts. The Mikulčice smoothers appeared in the “acropolis,” half of them in the ill of pits located in the settlement;123 the one from Bojná came from the lip of the sunken building; and 121. Ladislav Špaček, “Nálezy středověkého skla ze Staré Boleslavi = Funde mittelalterlichen Glases in Stará Boleslav,” in Historické sklo [note 9], pp. 101–107. 122. Steppuhn [note 68], pp. 74–76 and 117–119, fig. 30; idem, “Der mittelalterliche Gniedelstein: Glättglas oder Glasbarren? Zu Primärfunktion und Kontinuität eines Glasobjektes vom Frühmittelalter bis der Neuzeit,” Nachrichten aus Nieder sachsens Urgeschichte (Stuttgart), v. 68, 1999, pp. 113–139; Pöche [note 84], pp. 80–81. 123. Himmelová, “Glasfunde” [note 9], nos. 122, 123, 126, and 128. 89 both Pohansko/B specimens are from the NW Suburb. Analyses of the new inds reveal one specimen of soda-lime glass (Table, A 08, Pohansko / B), which has the highest content of sodium oxide, and two examples of wood-ash glass (Table, A 02 and A 09, Bojná and Pohansko / B). Previous analyses of two smoothers from Mikulčice vaguely mention glass with a high lead content, 4.7% K2O and 1.2% Na2O.124 The other smoothers from Mikulčice were probably made of wood-ash glass or lead glass; they are all described as having highly corroded surfaces, whereas the smoother made of soda-lime glass has only a matte surface. The glass used varies widely, even more so in Haithabu, with more than a hundred specimens. There, the smoothers were made of wood-ash glass and only occasionally of wood-ash lead glass.125 Nevertheless, the concentration of ind-places in northern Europe appears to indicate that the smoothers were exported from that region to Great Moravia. Tesserae A tessera made of opaque gray-blue glass from Mikulčice was classiied as glass from Roman times.126 A Roman origin, however, does not exclude its use in a Carolingian environment. In early medieval Scandinavia, Roman tesserae were used in the production of beads, and they also appear at Carolingian sites in Germany, including the monastery at Lorsch127 and the Pfalz at Paderborn.128 Blue tesserae from 11th-century and later contexts in Schleswig are explained as protective amulets.129 The same 124. Frána [note 20]. 125. Steppuhn [note 68], pp. 135 and 137, and n. 27. 126. Himmelová, “Glasfunde” [note 9], no. 124. 127. Markus Sanke, Karl Hans Wedepohl, and Andreas Kronz, “Karolingerzeitliches Glas aus dem Kloster Lorsch,” Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters, v. 30, 2002, pp. 37–75, esp. p. 54. 128. Karl Hans Wedepohl, “Karolingisches Glas,” in 799: Kunst und Kultur der Karolingerzeit, v. 1, Mainz: P. von Zabern, 1999, pp. 218–221, esp. p. 219. 129. Peter Steppuhn, Glasfunde des 11. bis 17. Jarhrhun derts aus Schleswig, Ausgrabungen in Schleswig, Berichte und 90 function may have been served by a tessera from Mikulčice and two tesserae of blue soda-glass from the 11th-century princely residence in Žatec.130 A lump of colorless soda-lime glass from Uherské Hradiště–Sady may have been a souvenir or an uninished object awaiting further processing (Fig. 9.8). Grave Finds In the ninth century, the custom of equipping the dead with personal efects and grave gifts continued in Great Moravia. Necklaces and bracelets of beads, as well as rounded buttons, were made of glass; less common were metal rings with inlays of colored glass. Glass vessels appear only rarely outside Scandinavia: in central Europe, only in the royal burial near Kolín and probably in Pohansko/N. Although there were identical vessels in both of these graves, and another in Birka, it is premature to suggest a connection between vessel types and burial customs. From the ninth to 11th centuries, there was also a widespread custom of placing “antiquities” (i.e., items and fragments from earlier periods) in graves. In Moravian and western Slovakian burial grounds, fragments of glass La T ène bracelets and Roman vessels were especially popular. This custom was demonstrated also at burial grounds in the settlements at Uherské Hradiště–Staré Město and Mikulčice.131 In Uherské Hradiště–Sady, two inds were probably in use during the lifetime of the person interred: a fragment of lat glass from Grave 142 Studien, v. 16, 2002, Neumünster: Wachholtz Verlag, pp. 101 and 102. 130. Černá [note 67], p. 17, figs. 5 and 7.2. 131. Šimon Ungerman, “Archaica in den frühmittelalterlichen Gräbern in Mähren,” in My Things Changed Things: So cial Development and Cultural Exchange in Prehistory, Antiq uity, and the Middle Ages, ed. Petra Maříková Vlčková, Jana Mlynářová, and Martin Tomášek, Prague: Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts, Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2009, pp. 224–256. in the church extension may have come from a reliquary, while the fragment of pink lead glass came from Grave 12 in the Sady chapel, a highly signiicant site. A fragment of a vessel (a lamp?) that was put into Grave 67 outside the church, which is far more recent, was in use in the ninth century. Although fragments of Roman glass have been found in four Mikulčice graves, only two examples seem to have been put there intentionally.132 One of them is the discoid base of a goblet lamp in Grave 1274; we assume it was used in one of the churches of the ninth century. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS The study of ninth-century glass from Great Moravia is in its infancy. Although all existing collections of inds have not yet been studied, the current state of our knowledge covers a wide range in terms of vessel types and compositions. Some types contribute only to investigations of early medieval glass in general because they have not been previously recorded (pink lead glass, early wood-ash glass with architectural decoration); others have not previously been discovered so far north of the Alps (goblet lamps, lamp with a handle). It becomes obvious that, quite apart from jewelry, glass products were not uncommon in the Great Moravian environment. The concentration of inds in the fortiied hilltop in Mikulčice shows that glass was in fairly common use by members of the secular social elite.133 Windowpanes as well as goblet lamps from Church V, close to the gate in the fortiication at Mikulčice, may be associated with the nearby church. A lamp function cannot be excluded for the funnel beaker from Basilica III. By contrast, the glass in Uherské Hradiště– Sady was used exclusively in the church environment. With caution, it is possible to observe developments in the occurrence of glass in this locality. The irst hollow glass could have reached this area by about the year 800, arriving with priests from Bavaria and Aquileia at the time of construction of the oldest part of the church. The opinion that the vessels with gold foil were used as chalices is refuted by inds from the secular environment;134 the fragment from Sady, however, does not exclude this possibility. The occurrence of lamps that played an important part in the Byzantine-Christian liturgy135 is conspicuous in Uherské Hradiště–Sady and probably also in Mikulčice. All the types common in the eastern Mediterranean and in the Byzantine world are represented here— stemmed lamps, goblet lamps, and lamps with handles. We can probably associate them with the arrival in Moravia of the missionary brothers Cyril and Methodius from Thessaloniki in 863; neither the dating of the Sady church complex nor that of the church in Mikulčice contradicts this. At present, these inds may be considered personal items of members of the church mission, rather than proof of business contacts with the Byzantine Empire. Bottles were also used in liturgical ceremonies, serving as vessels for water, wine, and oil,136 and this purpose may be attributed to the small bottle with an “X” on the neck and to another bottle with a handle, from Uherské Hradiště–Sady. The former was certainly produced in western Europe, the latter probably so. Proof of contacts with the Carolingian empire are also to be found in other products made of early wood-ash glass, such as the fragment of the vessel with architectural decoration, the bottle with a handle, and the many-sided goblet from Sady. Furthermore, these unique vessels probably represented personal gifts to dignitaries in the Holy Moravian Church. Long-distance trade is represented by inds from secular contexts, such as the widely distributed funnel beakers and linen smoothers. Questions are posed by the relatively high number of globular beakers with special applied crisscross decoration and their more sporadic occurrence 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. Ibid., p. 228. Himmelová, “Glasfunde” [note 9], figs. 3–5. Baumgartner and Krueger [note 80], p. 65. Olcay [note 102]. Antonaras [note 99], p. 54. 91 in northern Europe. The only excavated sites that have yielded such objects are Birka and Dorestad. It seems reasonable to suppose that window glass was imported to Great Moravia from Zalavár, Hungary. Local production cannot be excluded, although only globular button production has been directly demonstrated in Devínská Kobyla, near Bratislava, in Slovakia.137 The ield of glass production in Great Moravia undoubtedly holds many surprises—the workshops in Staré Město still await study.138 In every 92 case investigated, the glass products that have been classiied demonstrate, in particular, far wider contacts with the Great Moravian empire than have previously been established. 137. Zdeněk Farkaš and Vladimír Turčan, “Včasnostredoveká sklárska pec v Bratislave na Devínskej Kobyle = Frühmittelalterliche Glasofen in Bratislava auf Devínska Kobyla,” Slovenská Archeológia (Nitra), v. 46, no. 1, 1998, pp. 31–54. 138. See notes 46 and 47.

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The Glass of Great Moravia: Vessel and Window Glass, and Small Objects

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