Archaeologists and anthropologists from the UPWr and research in Libkovice, Czech Republic

• 800 years of history frozen in time, or why Libkovice is a unique research site
• Paleolithic, Neolithic and Magdalenian culture
• A village – from the 7th century AD...
• What can we find out from the skeletons at the Libkovice cemetery?
• Archaeologists and... the pathology of pregnancy – what do they have in common?
• There is still a lot to explore

Libkovice, located in the northwest of the Czech Republic, is a globally unique site in terms of research opportunities. The village functioned continuously for almost 800 years. Only at the end of the 20th century, in connection with plans to expand the nearby lignite mine, were the inhabitants relocated and the town razed to the ground.

However, before the complete destruction of Libkovice and the surrounding areas, research was carried out for many years to identify what the settlement had looked like over the centuries. But the results have exceeded our expectations! So far, rescue research has been carried out by the Institute for the Preservation of Archaeological Heritage of North-West Bohemia in Most (UAPP Most) and the University of West Bohemia in Pilzen (ZČU). However, due to the intensification of research, the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences joined them in 2019.

In 2021, human biology students, PhD students of the Doctoral School and scientists from the Department of Anthropology of the University of Wrocław, students of archeology from the Institute of Archeology of the University of Wrocław, members of the Archeolodzy.org foundation, PhD students of ZČU and employees of UAPP Most participated in the research. The research interest of the Polish team includes relics of the medieval church of St. Nicholas and the surrounding cemetery, where the inhabitants of Libkovice were buried. The dead were buried in this place from the end of the 12th to the mid-19th century.

What's so unique about Libkovice?

It is not often that archaeologists have the opportunity to find a site that, after almost 800 years of existence, has suddenly been frozen in time. Like a ship stuffed into a bottle, intricately constructed and then secured. Normally, villages, and even more so cities, are a living organism. Research possibilities are usually limited to new investments where planned earthworks could pose a risk for potential underground cultural heritage. We only get a fragment from a larger area, and therefore the information obtained during the excavations is limited. Wide-scale research in the hearts of cities is now a rarity. Huge storage facilities or motorways are built outside cities, very rarely at the expense of entire towns. This is most often the case with large bodies of water and opencast mines. However, it varies with the degree of involvement of archaeologists in these investments. In the case of the activities of Severočeské doly a.s., putting aside the environmental impact and the drama of the displacement of the inhabitants, the current relation of the mine with archaeology is more than satisfactory.

All the buildings were demolished. As far as the eye can see, there is nothing above the ground. However, everything that was under the ground has remained intact! And this is what interests us – archaeologists – the most! Our Czech colleagues stand before an opportunity to verify the effectiveness of all their methods. Will the existing hypotheses on the development of medieval villages be confirmed? Will the official plans of the village be confirmed in the results of the research? How do the results of geophysical prospecting relate to the results of exploration? How old are the first traces of settlement in this area? And there is a lot to cover, because sooner or later the entire area will be dug up, leaving only a huge hole.

Libkovice was already inhabited in the Paleolithic age!

Of course, not the village of Libkovice per se, but the area where the first houses were built in the early Middle Ages. It turns out that the fertile soil, the gentle hills and the stream lazily flowing among them, as well as the location on one of the highest points in the whole area, have always been seen as attractive. Back in the times when the sun was a god, writing in a literary fashion... And although our Czech colleagues found many traces of settlements from the Neolithic and later periods, there was nothing from earlier times. Only this season did a Palaeolithic flint specialist find a beautiful flint tool of the Magdalenian culture in the river gravel.

In the place where the Polish team worked there are few traces of prehistoric activity, as most of them were destroyed by medieval and early modern burials. Also this season, when the area outside the cemetery wall began to be explored, older relics began to be found, such as a fragment of a Corded Ware culture vessel. For the record, representatives of this culture, which dates from around 3,100 to 1,800 BC, play a key role in the origins of the Praindoreupeans.

The Czech teams boast of a much greater number of findings from the Neolithic, Eneolithic, and Bronze Age, as well as related to the Celtic population. Especially operating on the tops of nearby hills. Furnished burials, thousands of post-holes, a square-shaped settlement surrounded by a palisade with four gates – it might seem that there were no periods when the area was uninhabited.

The medieval village of Libkovice

The research of our Czech colleagues to date shows that the origins of the medieval village date back to the 7th/8th century AD. Until the turn of the 10th/11th century, it consisted of a couple of isolated houses loosely arranged along the stream. However, the fewest archaeological sources that survived are from this period, in connection with later transformations, reconstructions, etc. Only from the 11th century until the beginning of the 13th century, the central part of the village, located around the later parish church, and the areas to the south and west of it, gradually became more and more built up. It is possible that in the centre there were also a mill and smithy. And since this is the Czech Republic, I believe there is a good chance that there was an inn there too.

And the first source mention of Libkovice from 1240 suggests it was such a village. It was then that Slavko – prior of the nearby Cistercian monastery in Osek, supposedly bought a fragment of the village. An interesting fact is that the Osek Monastery still exists today and is a beautiful example of Gothic architecture hidden under the veil of Baroque. It has just been renovated, and you can taste delicious beer from a local brewery, cosily set within the monastery walls.

One of the most important pieces of information that has been obtained thanks to systematic archaeological research is the invariability of the changes introduced at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries. What does this tell us? More or less at that time the village was enlarged with typical street buildings, with two rows of buildings stretching along the brook – with one row on one side of the watercourse and the strips of fields behind the buildings. This system did not change until the beginning of the 19th century, when the reality became totally different due to the rapid industrialisation of the region. This does not mean that nothing happened in the village for 500 years. One of the most obvious and permanent changes, for example, was that people were born and died.

Why examine a graveyard and skeletons?

Although birth usually took place under similar circumstances, dying was a completely different matter. And probably each time. Conducting research in cemeteries, not only the one in Libkovice, allows to identify material culture and funeral customs. But above all it provides information relevant to understanding the demographics, health and nutritional status, as well as biology of the buried community. And not to mention the purely moral aspect that each of the skeletons deserves to be exhumed and rested in a safe place.

In the case of villages this is especially important, as most archaeological excavations are carried out in municipal cemeteries. After all, the vast majority of people have lived in the countryside since the beginning of humanity. Only the industrial revolution significantly changed this state, but for example, according to data from 2019, 40% of Poland's population still lives in the countryside. And of course there is nothing wrong with that, because anyone who has to spend time in a large city in the middle of summer would give anything for a weekend in the countryside, but archaeologists are rarely so interested. Even in the case of abandoned towns, it is still small towns that are more often researched in Poland.

What have we found so far during our anthropological analyses? The examined skeleton material is mainly from the graves located in the cemetery around the church of St. Nicholas and the ossuaries created during the construction of the new temple. In many cases, loose bones or burials were found that were not fully preserved, which resulted from the displacement of digging new graves. A total of over 450 burials, preserved to a varying degree, have so far been exhumed.

After the first season in 2019, it was discovered that most women died at the adultus age (approx. 22 to 35 years), while men at the maturus age (approx. 35 to 55 years). This kind of gender distribution of age categories at death is characteristic of medieval human populations. Excess mortality of women is commonly observed, especially in the period related to childbirth and puerperium. It is also worth emphasising the considerable number of individuals of old age (senilis) – 2.7% among regular burials and 7.8% in the ossuary material. Living to an old age was common among populations living in favourable environmental conditions and in a good biological state.

A unique case of pregnancy paleopathology

It was only a small fragment in relation to the area of the entire cemetery. If all goes well, after this season (2021) only 1/4 of the total area will be left for research. However, by far the most surprising of all discoveries so far was the discovery of a calcified cyst in one of the 19th century burials! And although the anthropologists in the field did have some hypotheses about its nature, specialist analysis was required.

It is possible that this case is a so-called fetus-in-fetu, a rare anomaly involving the presence of a calcified fetal mass within the body cavity of a newborn or infant. This is a rare malformation, in many respects similar to retroperitoneal teratoma, but differing in the shape of the pathological mass and its metameric segmentation along the spinal axis.

It is also very similar to something called stone baby (lithopedion), and identification is made difficult by a very small number of documented cases discovered during archaeological research. There is only one confirmed archaeological case of lithopedion in the world! It was discovered in 1993 at the Bering Sinkhole site in Texas. We covered the topic of unusual pathologies of pregnancy in Archeologia Żywa 1 (79) 2021, and the case from Libkovice was published in an article devoted to it in the renowned journal PLOS One.

This is not the end of our research

It is still ongoing and the current conclusions may still be changed. Additionally, research in the field is only the first step. The next are improving the documentation, conservation of monuments, analysis of historical material. Fortunately, the cooperation of all involved institutions – Ústav archeologické památkové péče severozápadních Čech, Západočeská univerzita v Plzni and the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences, with the investor Severočeské doly a.s., is going well and we trust it will continue to be very productive. One could only wish that each investment would be so well planned.