FIDVÁR, a Bronze Age settlement near Nitra, is again bringing German and Slovak archaeologists together and in September they will begin further archaeological research of this unique fortified town. The SITA newswire wrote in late August that the German side will finance almost the entire international project, which is expected to last for several years and bring valuable scientific discoveries.
Matej Ruttkay, the director of the Archaeological Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences told SITA that this year will be mostly about preparing for the research and that the actual archaeological work will be more intensive during future years.
The researchers will research the locality of Fidvár by all methods used in archaeology, such as archaeobotanics, archaeozoology and others. The research should advance knowledge about Bronze Age society and how it operated.
The territory of present-day Slovakia was one of the places where copper, from which bronze is produced, was mined and exported. The archaeologists believe that Fidvár was one of the distribution centres for this metal into the rest of Europe. By processing and using bronze, the development of humankind was moved forward significantly, but scientists have only limited knowledge about how this process worked in the central Danube region.
Archaeological work was undertaken at Fidvár in spring and summer 2007 through a Slovak-German cooperation project.
