Development-led excavation in Rousínov in 2017 uncovered a La Tène cemetery in which 30 graves were excavated. Out of these, two exceptional graves, a rich female inhumation and a warrior’s cremation grave, are discussed in detail in this paper. In addition to typological determination of artefacts, the paper includes the results of a survey and conservation work on metal artefacts and anthropological analysis. The inhumation burial of a gracile woman at the age of about 30 years (H823) contained, among other things, a complete bimetallic chain-belt; its furnishing can be dated to LT B2/C1. The warrior’s cremation contained, among other things, an undeformed sword in its scabbard and a spear-head with an exceptionally decorated socket; the grave goods date to LT C1.
South Moravian Croats represent the northernmost location of the infamous colonisation that took place in the 16th century on the territory of the former Habsburg monarchy as a result of the lost Battle of Mohács (1526). Throughout the 19th century the Moravian Croat community was downsized to two enclaves: one with three villages in German encirclement, one with three villages in the Břeclav region within the Bohemian settlement. During the 19th century the Moravian Croats merged with the residential population of Slavonic nations. Therefore, at the end of the 19th century the only places with the Moravian Croats are around the town of Mikulov, in villages Nový Přerov, Dobré Pole and Frélichov (today’s Jevišovka).
Their traditional culture has always been manifested especially by their folk costume. Collections of clothes owned by the Institute of Ethnography of the Moravian Museum in Brno document individual stages of development (especially that of women’s clothes), represented by a sufficient number of items. Of particular importance are also old photographs (e.g. by J. Klvaňa, Fr. Pospíšil, A. Blažek). In 2002, the existing collection was enlarged to include a collection of 101 photographs depicting the life of south Moravian Croats from the village of Frélichov. These photographs were taken by Othmar Ruzicka (1877-1962), an artist from Vienna. He used these photos as models for paintings. He took these photos during his first visits to the villages at the beginning of the 20th century. They are valuable evidence of the traditional clothing worn by Moravian Croats during the period of time when it was still normal to wear it on a daily basis and they are an important source of information on its individual parts, design, material and embroideries.
In the effort to revise the present state of preservation and knowledge of archaeological components on the site Drnholec “Holenická pole” in South Moravia, the various non-destructive (aerial and geophysical prospections) or lesser invasive (metal detector prospection) methods have been applied. The aim was to identify areas of activity, their functional and chronological interpretation and to determine the basic spatial relationships of the main components. By combining the results of individual methods, areas of activity from the La Tène and Roman times were identified with a relatively high degree of certainty. An entirely new discovery is the supposed presence of a Roman temporary camp in this intensely populated position. Part of its fortification was identified by geophysical survey, and also in the set of metal-detector finds chronologically related significant objects can be identified.