- The First Towns -
a number of defended settlements in the Liptov Basin, but it seems to have acted
as a central place. Several such semi-nucleated sites are known in the region with
evidence of industrial activity - extensive ironworking at Zemplin, and pottery
production, including painted wares, at Budapest.
BOHEMIA AND MORAVIA
In 1984 I drew a contrast between the small defended sites of Slovakia with their
surrounding open settlements, and the nucleated oppida of Bohemia and Moravia in
which the whole of the defended area was occupied. An overlap area existed around
Bratislava. This contrast still exists, but the boundary is less marked. The oppida in
Bohemia are generally large, up to 18o ha or more at Zavist, whereas the largest
oppidum in Moravia, Stare Hradisko, is only 30 ha, still larger than the Slovakian
sites, but like them it has extensive occupation outside its defences (Cizmar 1989).
The Czech sites are still generally the earliest oppida in temperate Europe, belong-
ing to the early second century Be - Zavist, Stradonice, Hrazany, Stare Hradisko.
Despite the apparently rational distribution along trade routes, the appearance of the
oppida was not a unitary phenomenon. Trfsov has long been accepted as a later addition
to the system some time in the first century Be (La Tene D 1 -2), and Drda (pers. comm.),
considering the evidence for reconstruction of sites and the subtle changes in
construction techniques for the defences, believes that a sequence can be detected,
with Zavist as the oldest. Their end is, however, synchronous, some time in La Tene
D 2, late in the first century Be, with violent destructions at Zavist and Hrazany, whereas
certainly in Slovakia, and perhaps in Moravia, the sites continued later, in places into
the first century AD. Despite one or two suggestions, no oppida have been definitely
identified in northern Bohemia, though major open settlements such as Lovosice (Salac
1990), and many small farming settlements on the loess, are now beginning to be
identified. The concept of the oppida being established to stem hostile Germanic
invasion from the north can no longer be sustained by the archaeology.
In both size and the complexity and elaborate sequence of its defences, Zavist is
obviously a key site, controlling, like Prague, the geographical centre of Bohemia
(Motykova et al. 1990). Despite the evidence of a massive late bronze age settlement,
and the Hallstatt - La Tene A settlement with its religious centre on the 'Akropolis'
(Motykova et al. 1986), the La Hne C2 oppidum is a new foundation after a couple
of centuries of abandonment. But the wealth of finds, especially coins, is still less
impressive than those plundered in the nineteenth century from its smaller neighbour
Stradonice (Rybova and Drda 1989), and the relative status of the two sites in the
economic and political hierarchy is unclear. But concentrations of iron working,
coin production, bronze-working and other industrial activity is a feature of all the
oppida which have been extensively explored.
GERMANY AND THE ALPS
Oppida occur from the Swiss plateau in the south to the German Mittelgebirge in
the north, but present no coherent pattern in chronology, construction, distribution,161