Politik und Wissenschaft in der prähistorischen Archäologie - Perspektiven aus Sachsen, Böhmen und Schlesien. E-BOOK

"Prze mysław Urbańczyk (p. 237)

Medie val Ar chaeo logy in Po lish His toric - Po litical Discourse

Ar chaeolo gy de ve lops with a rhythm that somehow parallels the changes of the political cir cumstances and the his to ry of Po lish ar chaeolo gy of fers a very good exam ple of the in vol ve ment of re search in cur rent political dis putes. A re view of the past hund red and fif ty years shows a »per ma nent dia lo gue« of ar chaeolo gists with the inner and for eign political trends. Des pite the com- mon opinion on the apolitical character of this discipline that re aches deep into the past, it is ob vious that ar chaeolo gy has always been at the fo re front of ideolo gical strugg les, es pecially du ring the peri ods of geopolitical tensions.

The 19th Century

In the midd le of the 19 th centu ry the discussion on the early Slavs had be- gun. It de ve lo ped parallel to the gro wing need to find a new national ideolo - gy af ter dis il lu si ons with the so - called Sarmatism which le gitimized the do mi- nation of the noble class which could not pre vent the collapse of the Kingdom at the end of the 18 th century. With the count ry subdivided in three parts oc- cupied by Aust ria, Prussia and Russia, thus »changing the accent from the Polishness to the Slav ness [...] was an at tempt to create a new ideolo gy that could ease adap ta tion of Po les to the new political cir cumstances«.1

That at mos phere resulted in an uncritical accep tance of the discoveries which responded to the political needs. Na tio nal emo ti ons and com ple xes we re pro jected deep into the »ar chaeolo gical« past. Therefore, even the great his to ri an Joa chim Le le wel was foo led in 1855 by the so - cal led »sto nes of Mikor zy no« that we re de co ra ted by an un known for ger with Slavic »ru nes«.

Similar ly, stone ru ins unco ver ed in 1856 on the Led nicki Ost rów island were com mon ly con si de red rem nants of a Sla vic »temp le«. In 1860 the fa mous writer Józef Ignacy Kraszewski published in Vilnius a book Sztuka u Słowian, szczególnie w Polsce I Litwie przedchrześcijańskiej [ The art among the Slavs, especially in pre - Chris ti an Po land and Li thua nia ] whe re he ar gu ed that »Regarding art production a Slav was equal to the neighboring peoples, which is pro ved by exca vations«. Such a situation may be somehow ex plained as a re action to the growing an ti - Slavic at ti tu de vi sible in the German his to rio so phy. J. G. Her der, L. Ranke and G. W. F. Hegel stressed the »other ness« or even cul tu ral inferiority of the Slavs who we redefined as »non - historic« peoples"