Czech Republic

The beginning of the field of anthropology in the Czech territory dates to the second half of the 19th century. The first research in the field of skeletal anthropology also dates to this period. The authors of research at this time were naturally the archaeologists who uncovered skeletal remains. They considered the study of skeletons, and predominantly of skulls, to be ‘complementary’ to archaeological research. Thus, this did not involve a systematic study based on a precisely defined methodology. This state of affairs naturally reflected the situation in other European countries. The works of Edvard Grégr (1827-1907) and Jindrˇich Wankel (1821-97) are considered to be the oldest works dedicated to the study of past populations. Grégr’s study ‘Of human skulls generally and Slavonic skulls particularly’ (‘O lebkách cˇloveˇcˇích vu°bec a slovanských zvlášteˇ’) was published as early as 1858. The subtext of this research, though, was partly political. At the time, Bohemia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The author was attempting to prove that Slavs represented the original settlers of the central European territory and thus indirectly to substantiate the right of the Czech nation to its own language and greater political independence from Vienna. Besides, a similar theme was subsequently tackled in other works. Three men contributed fundamentally to the development of anthropology in the first half of

the 20th century: Luboš Niederle (1865-1944), Bohumil Hellich (1851-1918) and Jindrˇich Matiegka (1862-1941). Luboš Niederle was the first associate professor of anthropology at Charles University in Prague (1892). Eventually, he left this field and dedicated himself solely to archaeology, where he proposed a system of Czech Prehistory which remains more or less valid today. Hellich analysed an extensive collection of skulls from the Museum of the Czech Kingdom (Muzeum království cˇeského). The last to be named, Jindrˇich Matiegka, was definitely the greatest personality of Czech inter-war anthropology (Figure 11.1). In 1920, he founded at Charles University the first independent anthropological institute in Czechoslovakia. Together with Aleš Hrdlicˇka, he also founded the journal Anthropologie (1923), and was editorin-chief for nearly 20 years. At the beginning of the 1920s, he held the position of Dean at the Faculty of Natural Sciences. Apart from palaeoanthropology (Homo predmostensis) and ‘historical’ anthropology (regarding the physical character of the prehistoric populations of the Czech

territory), his publications included studies from other areas of anthropology (somaticanthropological philosophy, racial types). Matiegka also devoted himself to the examination of the remains of prominent personalities of Czech and European history (e.g., St Wenceslas, Wenceslas II, Wenceslas III, Comenius, Tycho Brahe) (see, e.g., Stloukal et al. 1999). His work on the Gravettian skeletons from Prˇedmostí represents an especially exceptional study of that time. The second anthropological university institute, The Institute of Anthropology, was founded

in the years 1923-27 by Vojteˇch Suk at the Masaryk University in Brno (Antropologický ústav, Masarykova Univerzita, Brno). When we attributed to Matiegka a privileged position within Czech anthropology, we did

not take into consideration Aleš Hrdlicˇka (1869-1943). Hrdlicˇka left Bohemia in his youth and spent the rest of his life in the USA. There, besides medicine, he graduated in anthropology and fundamentally influenced the development of this field in America. In Chicago, he founded probably the as yet most prestigious international anthropological journal, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. He headed the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. During his career, he published more than 300 anthropological studies. He formulated the theory regarding the common origin and development of Man. Hrdlicˇka supported the development of this field in Bohemia. As has been mentioned already, he was the co-founder of the journal Anthropologie and he initiated the foundation of the Museum

Figure 11.1 Jindrich Matiegka, founder of the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Science of Charles University, Czech Republic

Source: J. Matiegka/J. Maly

of Man (today the Hrdlicˇka Museum of Man) at Charles University in Prague (see. e.g., Fetter et al. 1967). Another eminent personality in Czech anthropology was archaeologist and palaeontologist

Karel Absolon (1877-1960). In the 1920s and 1930s he directed research on many Moravian Palaeolithic sites and he collected a considerable amount of Palaeolithic finds from a number of sites (e.g., Býcˇí skála, Pekárna, Dolní Veˇstonice, Stránská skála, Šipka). Absolon founded the Department of Prehistory at the Moravian Museum in Brno. He also organized a large exhibition about the Evolution of Mankind at this museum (see, e.g., Malina et al. 2009). After the Second World War, the development of anthropology in Bohemia was indirectly

influenced by the systematic archaeological investigation of extensive burial grounds. In Communist Czechoslovakia, great attention was dedicated especially to Slavonic archaeology, partly characterized by localities of the early Mediaeval Great Moravian Empire (e.g., Staré Meˇsto near Uherské Hradišteˇ, Mikulcˇice-Valy) and by the Mediaeval Premysl dynasty in Bohemia (e.g., Libice, Budecˇ). This fact was also naturally related to the attempt to support the ideal of ‘Slavonic brotherhood’ in association with the justification of political ties with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This research uncovered dozens of burial grounds. One example is the Great Moravian settlement agglomeration at Mikulcˇice-Valy, where around 2,500 human graves have been discovered to date. In the 1950s and 1960s several institutions were established in Bohemia focusing on the

research of our ancestors. These mainly included the Department of Anthropology at the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague (Archeologický ústav Akademie veˇd Cˇeské republiky, Praha), the Anthropos Institute at the Moravian Museum in Brno (Anthropos, Moravské zemské museum, Brno) and finally the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum in Prague (Antropologické oddeˇlení, Národní museum, Praha). Other anthropologists giving consideration to the study of methods of skeletal anthropology worked in the biological department of the Criminology Institute in Prague, which was founded in 1958. At this time, within the research of past populations, three main trends gradually crystallized

in Bohemia. These were:

1 Palaeoanthropology, which focused on processing the fossils of Neanderthals and Upper Palaeolithic Anatomically Modern Humans found in Moravia (Šipka, Ku°lna, Dolní Veˇstonice, Pavlov, Prˇedmostí, Stránská Skála), Bohemia (Zlatý ku°nˇ) and Slovakia (Gánovce, Šala) (research by Emanuel Vlcˇek and Jan Jelínek);

2 Palaeodemography of prehistoric and historical burial grounds: the establishment and development of this new approach to the analysis of human skeletal remains was influenced by the discovery of large burial grounds. This method was based on the demographic characteristics of groups, based in turn on the calculation of so-called life tables (research by Milan Stloukal, Hana Hanáková, Jaromír Chochol, Miroslava Blajero and Vladimír);

3 Palaeopathology: the study of the health status of past populations (by Eugen Strouhal and Luboš Vyhnánek).