Jan Kolář

Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences · Department of Prehistorical Archaeology

The population boom-and-bust during the European Neolithic (7000–2000 BC) has been the subject of lively discussion for the past decade. Most of the research on this topic was carried out with help of summed radiocarbon probability distributions. We aim to reconstruct population dynamics within the catchment of a medium sized lake on the basis of i...

Increasing scholarly interest in past human mobility has provoked intense debate between archaeologists and archaeogeneticists. Explanations advanced by the latter have been criticised for framing explanations in terms of large-scale migrations, lacking underpinning social theory or interest in human behaviour; conversely, archaeologists have been...

Europe’s prehistory oversaw dynamic and complex interactions of diverse societies, hitherto unexplored at detailed regional scales. Studying 271 human genomes dated ~4900 to 1600 BCE from the European heartland, Bohemia, we reveal unprecedented genetic changes and social processes. Major migrations preceded the arrival of “steppe” ancestry, and at...

Estimating past population dynamics has become a major research topic for archaeology, which uses several proxies for studying past demography. The Czech Republic represents a unique region with abundant digital archaeological and palynological datasets comprising tens of thousands of records covering the whole Holocene. We used these datasets to q...

This article presents a series of recommendations for the publication of archaeological data, to improve their usability. These 12 recommendations were formulated by archaeological data experts who mined thousands of publications for different data types (including funerary practices, accelerator mass spectrometry dating, stable isotopes, zooarchae...

Tracing human-vegetation interactions that occurred in the past has always been one of the key topics of paleoecology. Here we use the pollen and archaeological databases available for the Czech Republic to determine links between individual pollen taxa and archaeological data and search for the spatial scales of comparability. The datasets include...

Human population has affected natural ecosystems since prehistoric times in many ways, causing disturbances in existing ecosystems and creating novel habitats, and altering the colonisation and extinction rates with potentially long‐lasting effects on biodiversity. Here, we explored the pervasive effects of past human occupancy on present‐day diver...

Higher amounts of scientific data about the human past justify the pursuit of more complex models of past processes and events. This is a driver for archaeology to become increasingly interdisciplinary-to analyze, synthesize and harmonize theoretical approaches, methods and data from diverse (sub)disciplines into a cohesive whole. This session invi...

The Bell Beaker site near Brodek u Prostějova (Czechia) has yielded remains of a large timber construction accompanied by four symmetrical ritual deposits with numerous artefacts, including more than fifty ceramic vessels. Their decoration consists of incised patterns, in nineteen cases with preserved white inlaid incrustations. To investigate the...

Publishing our work is a major part of being an archaeologist, but the routes to publication are not always clear. There are national differences in style and preferred publication type, different sub-disciplinary norms, and language and style barriers that may seem insurmountable. Moreover, wisely planned publication strategies are often necessary...

Robust estimates of population are essential to the study of human–environment relations and socio-ecological dynamics in the past. Population size and density can directly inform reconstructions of prehistoric group size, social organisation, economic constraints, exchange, and political and social institutions. In this pilot study, we present an...

Significance Subsistence shifts from hunting and gathering to agriculture over the last 12,000 y have impacted human culture, biology, and health. Although past human health cannot be assessed directly, adult stature variation and skeletal indicators of nonspecific stress can serve as proxies for health during growth and development. By integrating...

Human activities have shaped the environment since long before the advent of agriculture and resulted in anthropogenic landscapes, which are sometimes perceived as natural, but are clearly shaped by dozens of previous generations. This study is the first to apply ecological niche modelling on a long time-series of archaeological data to illuminate...

Recenzované publikace / Reviewed publications Laura Coltofean-Arizancu – Bisserka Gaydarska – Uroš Matić (eds.): Gender stereotypes in archaeology: a short reflection in image and text. (rec. J. Kolář) Jiří Škabrada a kol.: Lidová architektura v jižních Čechách. (rec. J. Kypta) Ladislav Čapek – Rudolf Procházka – Lenka Sedláčková (eds.): Trojí živo...

The dataset described in this paper represents the largest and most comprehensive collection of radiocarbon dates from the Czech Republic to date. The dataset offers 1579 samples from 357 archaeological sites dating from the Early Mesolithic (10,000 BC) to AD 1250. Published in a simple spreadsheet format, it offers researchers a quick tool for fur...

It is an honour and pleasure to invite you to the 19th Conference of the International Work Group for Palaeoethnobotany (IWGP) which will be held in České Budějovice (Budweis in German), the capital of South Bohemia region and centre of academic life. IWGP in České Budějovice will offer the results of archaeobotanical research on a global scale at...

CE-TAG Central European Theoretical Archaeology Group 7th Annual Meeting Masaryk University at Brno – Call for Papers – Theoretical Approaches to Computational Archaeology Conference dates: Tuesday, 19th – Wednesday, 20th of October 2021 Conference venue: Department of Archaeology and Museology Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

The final programme of this year's Central Europe Theoretical Archaeology Group meeting at Brno, 19th to 20th of October is online now!! For more information and registration, just drop an email to kempf(aett)phil.muni.cz See you soon in person at Brno!

Past two decades brought us a growth in use of computational methods and big data in archaeological research. This resulted in a significant shift in the research of human past and an increasing number of publications covering a broad spectrum of topics from remote sensing applications to site distribution or network analyses. Simultaneously, a str...

Medieval settlement history in Europe is a common topic in several scientific disciplines. Recently, Fanta et al. (2020) examined colonization processes in Bohemia through the comparison of archaeological evidence and historical records. They concluded that the first mentions of settlements in historical documents are not reliable sources for settl...

In the 12,000 years preceding the Industrial Revolution, human activities led to significant changes in land cover, plant and animal distributions, surface hydrology, and biochemical cycles. Earth system models suggest that this anthropogenic land cover change influenced regional and global climate. However, the representation of past land use in e...

Human culture, biology, and health were shaped dramatically by the onset of agriculture ~12,000 years before present (BP). Subsistence shifts from hunting and gathering to agriculture are hypothesized to have resulted in increased individual fitness and population growth as evidenced by archaeological and population genomic data alongside a simulta...

The Covid-19 pandemic is exacerbating the job crisis in archaeology. Now, more than ever, ECAs need your help to navigate the job market and develop their career. Do you have experience working in archaeology? Bring your skills and knowledge and become a mentor. Together let's make a difference! Find out more: https://ecarchaeologists.com/mentoring...

The ERCA task force was set up in November 2019 with a view to make early-career researchers feel heard, empowered and supported (Brami et al. 2020). Here we explore and present personal experiences of recently-tenured archaeologists. In this first batch of interviews dedicated to Northern Europe - including Britain, Scandinavia and Northern German...

A short paper on the role of archaeology within historical ecology in a Czech popular scientific journal Živa.

The paper discusses the relationship between landscapes, technologies and societies. Social archaeology often studies artefacts and their social significance, whereas landscape archaeology and palaeoecology focus on the economic potential of land-scapes and vegetation cover. With the help of the concept of landscape technologies and the example of...

Part of the session: Upscaling palaeoecological, archaeological and historical records of land-use and land-cover change 1. Chair Marie-Jose Gaillard. Presentation abstact :The PAGES LandCover6K group is concerned with whether prehistoric human impacts on land cover were sufficiently large to have had a major impact on regional and global climate...

The LandCover6K group is concerned with whether prehistoric human impacts on land cover were sufficiently large to have had a major impact on regional climates. Climate model simulations have shown that land use data sets can have large regional impacts on climate in the recent past and may have also done so during prehistory. However, there are ma...

The LandCover6K Working group is concerned with the question of whether prehistoric human impacts on land cover (i.e. anthropogenic land cover change due to land use) were sufficiently large to have had a major impact on regional climates. Climate model simulations have shown that land use data sets can have large regional impacts on climate in the...

Sandra Mariët Beckerman . Corded Ware Coastal Communities: Using Ceramic Analysis to Reconstruct Third Millennium bc Societies in the Netherlands (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2015, 311 pp., 38 b/w and colour illustr., 30 tables, pbk, ISBN 978-90-8890-318-2) - Volume 20 Issue 4 - Jan Kolář

Temperate oak-dominated woodlands are plant communities characterized by relatively open canopy structure and often rich assemblages of light-demanding understory species. This vegetation prevailed in Central European lowlands during the early and middle Holocene. Where open woodlands persisted in later periods, several main factors might have prev...

Mortuary variability can be observed within the archaeological record of the Final Eneolithic Corded Ware culture in Moravia (Czech Republic). The approach of the presented investigation analyses only good quality data using multidimensional statistical techniques, primarily including graves recently excavated in the area. The constructive and mani...

Several archaeological databases containing information on sites and finds in geographical space have been created in the Czech Republic since the 1990s. Due to partial decentralisation, the most prominent example – the Archaeological Database of Bohemia – was spatially restricted to the western part of the Czech Republic. Moravia and the Czech par...

This paper examines the possibilities of creating quantified models of past human activities in both time and space. The study area lies in the south-eastern Czech Republic and western Slovakia. The spatio-temporal model of behavioural categories was calculated with the help of Monte Carlo simulations and statistical testing. One of the main advant...

The Bronze Age of Eurasia (around 3000-1000 BC) was a period of major cultural changes. However, there is debate about whether these changes resulted from the circulation of ideas or from human migrations, potentially also facilitating the spread of languages and certain phenotypic traits. We investigated this by using new, improved methods to sequ...

Archaeological theories and methods are communicated via language that shapes practices of different archaeological communities. Some of these communities wonder about their failures to spread their ideas beyond the limits of their own intellectual territories. Since written texts are central to knowledge sharing in contemporary archaeology, they r...

In this paper we focused on the reconstruction of dietary behaviour and food culture in the population of the Corded Ware culture in Central Moravia. The data comes from sites at Ivanovice na Hané 3/2, Ivanovice na Hané 4 and Hoštice 4. The main aim of this study is to get data about diet and symbolic meals indicated in graves in the form of animal...

Tato práce zpřístupňuje odborné veřejnosti nově prozkoumaný hrob kultury se šňůrovou keramikou z Brankovic, ve kterém byl pozorován a dobře zdokumentován průběh sekundární manipulace. V další části práce jsou diskutovány některé otázky a problémy specifické pro studium vícefázo-vého pohřebního ritu a zejména sekundárních pohřebních manipulací. Pro...

Report from an archaeological seminar