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X/2/2019
INTERDISCIPLINARIA ARCHAEOLOGICA
NATURAL SCIENCES IN ARCHAEOLOGY
homepage: http://www.iansa.eu
Obituary
In Remembrance of Slavomil Vencl,
a Great Personality with a Modest Mind
Katarína Kapustka
Slavomil Vencl was born on 18
th
October 1936 in Dlouhá
Třebová in eastern Bohemia (Czech Republic). He was an
important Czech archaeologist, but he also devoted part of
his career to the study of graphics. In between 1954 and 1959
he studied prehistory in the class of Professor Jan Filip at the
Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. In 1959 he
worked for a short time in the National Museum in Prague,
but since that year until the very end of his life he was closely
linked to the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy
of Sciences in Prague. He was also an external teacher at his
alma mater
, Charles University in Prague (1979–2002) and
at the University of Western Bohemia in Pilsen (1998–2001).
The most important part of his work is connected with
the archaeology of foragers, especially of the Upper
Palaeolithic, Late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic. There are
several diferent issues that can be mentioned here. First of
all it was his systematic work on the Late Palaeolithic period
in central Europe, which was pioneering (Vencl, 1970a).
Also important was his research on the Upper Palaeolithic,
especially concerning settlement features preserved in loess.
Some of these sites were the result of salvage archaeology,
such as the case of the Gravettian settlement in Stadice (Vencl,
1991a), but others were systematic long-term excavations,
such as the Magdalenian settlement in Hostim excavated
between 1963 and 1969 (Vencl, 1995a), or the Gravettian
site in Lubná (Vencl, 1966). Apart from stratifed sites, he put
a lot of efort into the exploration of surface fnds, especially
from the Mesolithic in diferent regions of Bohemia – as
was the analysis of material from the Sopotnice sites (Vencl,
1992) or the comprehensive publication on South Bohemian
hunter-gatherer occupation, which is mostly dated to the
Late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods (Vencl, ed., 2006).
However, his work was not only focused on archaeological
fnds: he also often tackled theoretical and methodological
issues. Most important are his refections on war craft and
violence (Vencl 1991b; Vencl, 2016), while he also devoted
his attention to theoretical problems connected with surface
surveys (Vencl, 1968; Vencl, 1995b). His scope of interests
and considerable knowledge were extremely broad. The
total number of studies and monographs written by Slavomil
Vencel exceeds 300 titles, focused on a whole range of issues,
including the publication of his salvage excavations dated to
diferent periods from the Palaeolithic up to the Middle Ages
(
e.g.
Vencl, 1960; Vencl, 1973; Vencl, 2011; Vencl, 2012).
So far I have attempted to summarize the professional
career of this exceptional archaeologist. But clearly that
is not enough to describe him, since I also knew him on a
daily basis, as a colleague from the next door ofce. I used to
greet him every time he arrived at his ofce and together we
discussed not just archaeology but also several diverse topics
of the day. I am therefore in no doubt that I will miss the true
personality he had.
Slavomil Vencl was however a very complex and rather
complicated personality. These characteristics were present
Volume X ● Issue 2/2019 ● Pages 177–178
Slavomil Vencl (18
th
October 1936, Dlouhá Třebová – 23
rd
June 2019,
Prague). Source of the photograph: Archive of the Archaeological Institute
in Prague, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, inheritance of
Slavomil Vencl.
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IANSA 2019 ● X/2 ● 177–178
Katarína Kapustka: In Remembrance of Slavomil Vencl, a Great Personality with a Modest Mind
178
in all spheres of his life; they were like the many facets of
a gem and they gave brilliance to his work, which was very
diverse.
A common characteristic throughout his work and life
was that of duty. Duty was often his main motivation when
choosing subjects of interest. His topics were invariably not
the fanciful or easy, but rather the complicated problems or
questions which required answers. This was not only the
case just in his publication priorities, but also regarding his
general priorities, including his scientifc specialization,
which he changed according to the requests of his superiors,
even though his original interests had been diferent.
And even in those new issues he achieved much detailed
knowledge and a precise view of the topic. In a similar way,
his sense of duty was connected with his extreme accuracy
and carefulness. All his work shows the strong efort he
made to achieve perfectness and not to forget a single detail.
So it is possible to claim that his work is accurate regarding
the published data and that all the details were all carefully
verifed, which is something that cannot be said about all
researchers’ work nowadays.
Another important feature of his life was his deep
relationship to the truth and righteousness. In all his
publications, anything that was guessed, surmised or in
any way formulated ambivalently could be clearly seen. He
always tried to make things as clear as possible, in order to
make it visible how the author works and thinks. This resulted
in extremely coherent style of work. His desire for truth led
him to be ever cautious, a principle always important in such
topics as deep prehistory. Thanks to these characteristics he
never found himself on the slippery slope of speculation. His
style was clear, the argumentation always easy to follow and
his conclusions always logical.
Finally, one must mention his humanism, which was
linked to his politeness and courteousness, something which
in today’s society is disappearing step by step. Slavomil
Vencl gave everyone a chance, to all who was interested;
he made no diferences when it came to age, education or
position. The interested person was always welcomed, no
matter how trivial their questions might be. The consequence
of which was the enormous number of non-professional
archaeologists, amateurs and collectors, with which he
collaborated during his long career. This cooperation was
never one sided: he was not just the researcher who kindly
consulted some amateur’s fnds, for he also discussed with
all such interested people and often collaborated with them
for a long time afterwards, some of them also becoming
co-authors of his publications.
This valuable person was active until the very end of his
life. He is an example worth following. Even when he knew
that the end of his days was drawing near, he gave his utmost
efort to put all his things in order, to make it possible for
other researches to continue his work.
However, the above-mentioned characteristics are just
fragments in a description of this complex personality. Even
so, they remain fundamental for understanding the basic
elements of his approach to life, people and work. Just as it is
impossible, in only a few paragraphs, to describe the breadth
of his entire personality, it is also not possible to mention all
the topics to which he devoted his attention during the sixty
years of his professional career. His professional contribution
in the felds of archaeology and graphic studies can be
partially seen within the selected bibliography below. His
complete bibliography was published in the Archeologické
rozhledy journal in 1997, 2007 and 2017.
Selected publications
1960: Kamenné nástroje prvních zemědělců ve střední Evropě – Les
instruments lithiques des premiers agriculteurs en Europe centrale.
Sborník Národního muzea v Praze. A-Historie
, 14, 1–91.
1966: La station paléolithique de Lubná, près de Rakovník (Boheme). In:
Investigations archéologiques en Tchécoslovaquie
. Prague, 25–26.
1968: Povrchový sběr jako technika archeologického průzkumu.
Muzejní a
vlastivědná práce
, 76(6), 96–99.
1970a: Das Spätpaläolithikum in Böhmen.
Anthropologie 8
, 3–68.
1970b: Mesolitické osídlení Českého krasu – Peuplement mésolithique du
Karst de Boheme.
Archeologické rozhledy
, 22, 643–657, 739.
1971: Topografcká poloha mezolitických sídlišť v Čechách – The
Topography of Mesolithic sites in Bohemia.
Archeologické rozhledy
, 23,
169–187.
1973: Časně slovanské osídlení v Běchovicích, o. Praha – východ – Die
Frühslawische Siedlung von Běchovice.
Památky archeologické
, 64,
340–392.
1978:
Stopy nejstarší lidské práce ve východních Čechách
. Hradec Králové.
1979: Nádoby z látek živočišného původu – Gefässe aus Sofen tierischen
Ursprungs.
Archeologické rozhledy
, 31, 530–570.
1989: Mezolitické osídlení na Šumavě – Die Mesolithische Besiedlung des
Böhmerwaldes.
Archeologické rozhledy
, 41, 481–501,593.
1991a: The rescue excavations of a Gravettian site at Stadice, district of Ústí
nad Labem. In:
Archaeology in Bohemia 1986–1990
. Praha, 191–193.
1991b: Interprétation des blessures causées par les armes au Mésolithique.
L´Anthropologie
, 95, 219–228.
1991c: On the importance of spatio-temporal diferences in the intensity of
Palaeolithic and Mesolithic settlement in Central Europe.
Antiquity
, 65,
308–317.
1992: Mesolithic settlement on cadastral territory of Sopotnice, district of
Ústí nad Orlicí – Mezolitická osídlení v katastru obce Sopotnice, okr. Ústí
nad Orlicí.
Památky archeologické
, 83(1), 7–39.
1995a:
Hostim – Magdalenian in Bohemina
. Prague.
1995b: K otázce věrohodnosti svědectví povrchových průzkumů – Surface
survey and the reliability of its results.
Archeologické rozhledy
, 47, 11–57.
1999: Stone Age Warfare, In:
Ancient Warfare
, Stroud, 57–72.
2003:
České exlibris: Czech Bookplate – Tschechisches Exlibris
. Praha.
ed. 2006:
Nejstarší osídlení jižních Čech. Paleolit a mesolit – The earliest
settlement of South Bohemia. Palaeolithic and Mesolithic
. Praha.
(S. Vencl, ed.,
et
J. Fröhlich, I. Horáček, J. Michálek, P. Pokorný, A.
Přichystal).
2011: K osídlení kultury řivnáčské na východním okraji Prahy.
Archeologické
rozhledy
, 63, 90–135 (et M. Dobeš, J. Zadák, J. Řídký).
2012: Ötzi: muž z tyrolského ledovce optikou archeologie nenalézaného.
Archeologie západních Čech
, 4, 90–102.
2012:
České grafcké novoročenky
. Pelhřimov. Ed. 2013:
The Prehistory of
Bohemia 1. The Palaeolithic and Mesolithic
. Praha (S. Vencl, ed.,
et
J.
Fridrich, K. Valoch).
2015:
Česká příležitostná grafka
. Pelhřimov
2016: Antropofagie jako jedna z forem pravěkého násilí.
Archeologie ve
středních Čechách
,
20, 555–572.
2018:
Moderní exlibris v českých zemích
. Pelhřimov.
2019: Herxheim as evidence of the existence of long‐distance wars in
prehistory.
Archeologie ve středních Čechách
23(1), 387–401.