Szombathy's excavations in the Mladeč cave and the first presentations of the results

Abstract

When Szombathy began studies in the Moravian karsts, prehistory was far from being its own discipline at the Vienna University. People who were dealing with prehistoric subjects, therefore, came from various backgrounds - geology, paleontology, art history or classical archaeology. If we want to understand the way Szombathy was doing his studies, it is important to have a closer look at his scientific background. After a solid scientific education at the Polytechnic Institute of Vienna in botanic, paleontology, mineralogy and geology, J. Szombathy became an assistant to Ferdinand v. Hochstetter, professor and director of the Technical University, and at the same time, he attended lectures at the University of Vienna concerning physical geography and the drawing of maps. He first made contact with archaeology when he joined an excavation with Ferdinand v. Hochstetter at the Hallstatt cemetery in 1877. When Hochstetter became director of the Imperial Mineralogical Cabinet, Szombathy followed him as his assistant. Szombathy undertook excavations in order to enlarge the paleontological and prehistoric collection (Heinrich, 2003). In 1880, he excavated in the caves of Southern Moravia on behalf of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Due to his education, he made exact cave surveys and plans, sieved the sediments and took samples for later scientific research, which was rather unusual for archaeological excavations in those days.