Decline of antiquity and the beginning of a new era in the Polish Carpathians

Abstract

The paper presents the cultural situation on the northern slopes of the West Carpathians during the Late Roman, the Early Migration and the beginning of the Early Medieval periods. At the close of antiquity, the western part of the area under discussion was inhabited by communities referred to as the North Carpathian group. Their settlement model in that period included single-household settlements situated in high locations, and big settlements in wide river valleys on the edges of overflowing terraces. People living in these settlements maintained contact with the northern, mountainous part of Slovakia, and also with the Carpathian Basin, the Danube River basin, and the post-Chernyakhov culture milieu. A new cultural cycle was initiated in the West Carpathians by the inflow of early Slavic groups representing the so-called Prague cultural province into the southern Vistula River basin. The decline of settlement of the North Carpathian group and the appearance of that linked with early Slavs both seem to fall around the middle of the 5 th century, and there may have been a causal link between these two phenomena.