Conclusion

Summary

THE STRONGHOLDS AND their buildings—whether churches or palaces—that we have examined here demonstrate the poverty of textual evidence for social and cultural processes in Central Europe in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Historians have typically depended on written sources, sometimes arguing that chronicles offer a more complete and reliable image than any other source available to researchers.

But the extensive archaeological evidence that we have presented fills the gap, even if only partly. But archaeology and related sciences benefit from fast-changing technologies. Research basing on archaeological findings requires patience, given the duration of field works. Some technologies and findings only allow a range of possibilities and interpretations, not exactitude. Furthermore, the shortage of textual evidence prevents us unambiguously and indisputably describing a given building in terms of its assigned function, the name of its founder, the value of an endowment from a founder to a given chapter or abbey, or a simple identification of persons in burials. Available written sources and a comparative method help. But a comparative approach allows us to identify formal (and, consequently, ideological) patterns, and recognize the cultural circle of the origins of prototypes.

Equally, the lack of archaeological tools, either underdeveloped or unavailable technologies, or the physical impossibility of analyzing an entire area, may contribute to some matters remaining obscure—which in turn affects the stratification of individual construction phases, and consequently their forms and appearance. Once these features have been properly identified, we can pursue further research on a specific building: its function (as in case of Ostrów Lednicki) or its dating and/or founder (as in case of the Poznań cathedral). But we should not be surprised if current or old hypotheses are overturned. Countless monuments are undergoing long-term research: the palatium on Ostrów Tumski island in Poznań, the cathedral in Wrocław, to the church in Giecz, St. Gereon's church in Kraków, and Kalocsa cathedral, to name just a few.

Architectural evidence identified through archaeology is never unambiguous. Damage and subsequent reconstruction hamper making identifications, offering a complete image, and/or interpreting the purpose or ideology behind individual buildings. Such are the circumstances of, for instance, the Bazilika Sv. Jiří (St. George’s) in Prague, the Esztergom cathedral, or the abbeys of Břevnov, Sázava, and Kaposszentijakab.