they were applied directly or they stimulated similar schemes to originate elsewhere as parallels. Czech archaeologists have also achieved positive results in the study of the natural environment and the spatial structure of sites. Problems involving the latter concern ensued not only from theoretical considerations but also from the unusually large rescue excavations that took place, by and large in northwestern Bohemia. This region was the only one to have an effective rescue team (a branch of the Prague Academy Institute) as early as the end of the 1950s; tens of hectares were continuously stripped and covered by rescue excavations in front of open coal mines, leading to the creation of an unusually rich archaeological record (see Neustupný 1994).

In the 1950s and 1960s archaeology was lavishly supported by the state for ideological reasons, and major amounts of money went to large-scale excavations. This, however, was done at the expense of rescue work, museums, and universities, which were allotted very limited funds. Moreover, the large excavations, mostly led by the institutes of the Academy of Sciences, often remained unpublished for decades, so their great informative potential was partly wasted. But in spite of this, these excavations have brought much new knowledge, which has not yet been fully used. The support for excavations substantially diminished in the 1970s when they began to necessite a growth in rescue work paid by the developers.

The Postsocialist Period

The power structures introduced by the communists had a devastating effect on Czech archaeology. In the postsocialist period almost nothing was normal: how could it have been without the imposition of the all-pervasive party control? The party disappeared by 1989, but the institutions created for its maintenance partly remained. At the beginning of the period it seemed that the transition to a normal state would be fast and easy, but such hopes have not been realized, mainly because many individuals succeeded in keeping their microenvironments unchanged. The previous system has been replaced by liberal mechanisms of self-rule in the field of research. As Czech society as a whole is successfully and rapidly moving toward a market economy based on private property and toward western-type democracy, the state of Czech archaeology is likely to change in the future.

The “Prehistories” of the Czech Republic

There are many summary works on Bohemian, Moravian, and Czechoslovak prehistory, far more than in other countries. The likely reason for this is that Bohemia and Moravia are geographically well defined by mountains, having no or sparse archaeological finds in border areas; thus, it is not necessary to draw artificial limiting lines along modern frontiers while compiling archaeological evidence.

Leaving aside the purely antiquarian lists of monuments, the first summary books are those by J.E. Vocel (1845, 1853, 1866). They were followed by a series of books, beginning with the works of Buchtela and Niederle (Buchtela 1899; Niederle and Buchtela 1910) and leading to those of Schránil (1928), Böhm (1941), Neustupný (1946), Filip (1948), and Neustupný (1968). All these writings are based on similar methodological and theoretical grounds (formal typological approach, interest in influences and limited migrations, little interest in economy and social relations). The last-named book, however, was concerned with ecological evidence and issues.

New principles were introduced by Evžen and Jiří Neustupný in 1961. The influences and migrations were kept to a minimum, and economic and social questions were discussed on an unprecedented scale. In this sense their work went far beyond the typological paradigm. Bohemian archaeology was influenced by the two preceding books (especially by their systematic discussions of prehistoric economy and society and their summaries of the environmental evidence), but otherwise it remained within the traditional typological current. The most recent attempt (Neustupný 1994), a textbook for schools, suppresses the typological detail and tries to explain the past in terms of the practical function, social meaning, and symbolic significance of the archaeological record.