On the beginnings of aristocratic seats in medieval Czech lands

Abstract

In discussions on the early medieval period it is still necessary from an archaeological perspective to deal with the absence of seats attributable to the emerging aristocracy; from a historical perspective, a no less vexing issue is what the genesis of the aristocracy signals as part of society-wide changes. The study of the basic arrangement of selected castles and other elite residences in the western cultural environment and their comparison with the form of Romanesque churches with western towers in Bohemia leads to the conclusion that early Bohemian castles are concealed in structures considered today exclusively as church buildings. The construction of early castles accompanied social transformations involving the gradual dissolution of archaic kinship communities – clans. The author discusses the terminological and semantic connection between the Latin castellum, Czech (Slavic) kostel and also Swedish kastal.