Staré Hradisko is one of the major Celtic oppida in Moravia and an important Late Iron Age centre in Central Europe. The site is located on the eastern edge of the Drahany Highlands, near the village of Malé Hradisko, roughly halfway between Prostějov and Boskovice. It occupies an isolated promontory between two watercourses, a naturally defensive position later reinforced by massive fortifications that are still clearly visible in the landscape today.
The fortified area covered approximately 37 hectares and was enclosed by ramparts with a total length of nearly 2.8 kilometres. Inside, the oppidum was not filled with randomly placed houses but carefully planned compounds measuring around 50 × 50 metres, separated by roads, some of them paved or reinforced. Similar settlement structures have also been identified outside the western fortifications, indicating a much larger functional settlement zone.
Staré Hradisko was not only a residential centre but above all a hub of craft production and long-distance exchange. Archaeological evidence confirms metalworking, coin minting, glass and bone working, amber processing and pottery production. Finds of Mediterranean imports and Roman Republican coins, together with large quantities of amber, point to the oppidum’s integration into long-distance trade networks, including routes connected with the Amber Road.
Chronologically, the site was occupied from the LT C2 phase, around the middle of the 2nd century BC, until the later part of LT D1, shortly after the middle of the 1st century BC. Although the surrounding environment was less suitable for agriculture than nearby fertile regions, archaeozoological remains and agricultural tools show that food production formed an important part of the local economy.
This site plays an important role in the research framework of the Between the Celts and the Northern People project, which focuses on cultural, economic and environmental interactions between La Tène communities and non-La Tène groups in Central Europe during the Middle and Late Pre-Roman Iron Age. Oppida such as Staré Hradisko provide crucial evidence for understanding how craft production, exchange networks and settlement organisation functioned within broader contact zones north of the Carpathians and Sudetes.
This post follows our previous update presenting artefact analyses from ongoing research. In the coming entries, we will return to Staré Hradisko by looking more closely at specific finds and analytical results that help reconstruct everyday life, economy and connectivity in this part of Iron Age Europe.
Follow the project for further updates, expert insights and accessible articles exploring how communities interacted, adapted and innovated in an increasingly interconnected world.
All posts about the oppidum in Staré Hradisko
-
Staré Hradisko – northern-style pottery made locally?
Among the finds from Staré Hradisko are ceramic fragments that can be classified stylistically as northern, that is, related to traditions characteristic of the Przeworsk cultural environment. Such material has already been noted and discussed in earlier publications, most notably by Miloš Čižmář. What has not been explicitly addressed, however, is an important technological detail…
-
Staré Hradisko – what is a Przeworsk fibula doing in a Celtic oppidum?
The iron fibula illustrated here belongs to Kostrzewski’s Type K, a form that plays an important role in discussions of cultural contacts and chronology in Central Europe during the Late Pre-Roman Iron Age. Fibulae of this type are not typical of the La Tène cultural sphere and, when found in La Tène contexts, are consistently…
-
Staré Hradisko – fortifications
The fortification system of Staré Hradisko has been recognised since the earliest archaeological investigations. In 1912, František Lipka and Karel Snětina described an extensive defensive layout composed of ramparts and terraces with a total length of approximately two kilometres. They assumed that the western ramparts, originally much higher, were reinforced with wooden palisades, while at…
-
Staré Hradisko – a courtyard-based city with roads and water systems
Excavations at Staré Hradisko demonstrated that the oppidum was not an agglomeration of randomly placed houses, but a carefully structured settlement organised around enclosed courtyards (dvorce). Early researchers could not yet define this layout, but already in the mid-twentieth century J. Bohm observed that residential buildings in the western outer bailey formed larger complexes functioning…