Název: Everyday life of the medieval farmstead. Evidence of the material culture in Central Europe. Master 's thesis deals with a summary of knowledge about material culture of deserted high- and late-medieval villages in the Czech Republic and assessing their interpretive possibilities for understanding the everyday life of the medieval farmstead. Attention is focused on the metallic component of the material culture. Basis of the thesis consists of the summary and critical evaluation of archaeological objects discovered during researches of deserted medieval villages, especially since the second half of the 20th century until today (Pfaffenschlag, Konůvky, Bystřec, Mstěnice, Svídna, Potálov, Kravín and Spindelbach). Part of the work is an analysis of finding and spatial context at the discussed archaeological sites. The findings are in the end compared with the selected foreign deserted medieval village (Hard in Lower Austria). This thesis evaluates how a study of the material culture contributes to economic issues and the socio-economic structures of a medieval village. Keywords deserted medieval village - farmstead - everyday life - material culture - metal artifacts - middle ages - Bohemia and Moravia - Austria

In the light of the current refugee crisis in the European Union, and the remarkably critical stance the East Central European states are taking in Brussels, this research contributes to a broader understanding of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland's policies towards refugees. By scrutinizing the process of developing refugee policies during the 1990s and 2000s, the research will demonstrate that the countries united in the V4 platform in their first years of transition generously contributed to international refugee protection. Steep increase of asylum applicants and negotiation talks with the EU in the late 1990s brought various changes to the refugee policies in the region, marked by more closely defining and the enhancing of asylum seekers' and recognized refugees' rights, but also by lower refugee recognition rates. Accession to the European Union ultimately resulted in more complete and comprehensive asylum policies in line with the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). However, the V4 states maintained rather restrictive interpretations of the European policy, explained by the pressure the CEAS places on the states at the EU's external border and lower economic capacity to accommodate large numbers of refugees. Recent developments are mostly the result of political exploitation...

This doctoral thesis deals with the border as a geographical phenomenon in medieval Central Europe. It seeks to answer questions about what is a border, why and how it was created and how its understanding has developed. It deals with ways of delineating an area, boundary signs and rituals. It also explores the course and the concept of borders especially in Central Europe in the Middle Ages but also takes into account the situation of the both earlier and younger periods. It pays attention to the land border of Bohemia and Moravia but also to the borders within the Czech Lands in comparison with similar examples from Central Europe. The work is based on an evaluation of written and material sources concerning the border and combines methods and practices of multiple disciplines: it is based on the results of studies in archaeology, legal history, settlement history, historical geography, general history and auxiliary historical sciences.

The thesis deals with the issue of gentrification in the post-socialist context of Central Europe. This phenomenon occurs mainly in the inner city districts, where the local social structure is disturbed through the physical upgrade of the neighborhood (e.g. flats, shops and restaurants) by pushing out the poorer layers of society by the more wealthy ones. In the cities marked by the communist urban planning, the inner city parts were neglected at the expense of peripheral prefab concrete buildings, thus creating great potential for local investment after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The process of gentrification is illustrated in this paper by the comparison of the two city districts Praga-Północ (Warsaw) and Prague 7 (Prague) in the time between 1989 and 2017. As a starting point for comparison, a special case of Prenzlauer Berg district in Berlin is used, where the process has shown significant impact already in the 1990s. In this respect the aim of the thesis is to investigate the links between Warsaw and Prague, also how these cases differ. At the same time, the role of the public sector is studied as a relevant factor influencing gentrification in the post-socialist region of Central Europe. The results of the study showed that analogous processes of gentrification appear in the Praga-Północ and...

The presented diploma thesis studies extreme growth depressions of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) in Central Europe. Examination of significant growth anomalies (pointer year analysis) is one of the methods, which investigates the reactions of forest stands to the ongoing climate change. Dendrochronological data was obtained from Czechia (23 sites) and Slovakia (4 sites). The main hypotheses of the thesis states that the extreme growth depressions relate to climatic anomalies, hence they can be explained geographically. The objectives were to 1) create a Cropper values chronology for each site which describes growth extreme depressions; 2) explain climatic causes of negative Cropper values for each site; 3) define geographical predispositions of a spatial distribution of extreme growth depressions; 4) spatially interpolate extreme growth depressions. The calculation of Cropper values was based on a normalisation in a moving window method with a 13-year window size and the input data detrended by a 50-year cubic smoothing spline. Created chronologies were correlated with monthly climate data (temperatures, precipitation, SPEI). Geographical predispositions of the spatial distribution of growth depressions were calculated using a hierarchical cluster analysis. The cluster analysis was also applied...

The thesis deals with the development of Central Europe in the period of the long 10th Century, trying to describe in general the change of that region in the given epoque. The comparison and interpolation of the phenomena such as the Christianisation, the emergence of the political and economic power and the general transformation of the society aims to define a new view of the whole problem. The preferred vision is the economic and political development of the elites, separated from the existing socio-political formations and constructing its own apparatus of power, that will only slowly and eventually confront and merge the pre-stat formation in the form of an Early Medieval Christian state.

This thesis is primaly focus on solving of comparison of ancient with recent coniferous forests and peat bogs in Central Europe. Discovered fossil records provide the detailed insight view to functions and interactions among individual components of former vegetation in the Carboniferous and the Early Permian compared to recent period. Another aspect is possible impacts of ancient pathogen activities to timber and foliage in analogy to recent ones.

The diploma thesis Printed Independent Magazines in Post-Digital Age tries to discover the motivation of editors-in-chief/art directors for creating a printed, independent magazine in Central Europe and at the same time how these magazines are influenced by post-digital trends. It uses a qualitative method of Grounded Theory based on data from semi-structured interviews. In the practical part of the research, nine authors from Austria, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary were approached. From the total number of respondents, data was obtained from seven of them. In the theoretical part, the work is focused on the history of independent print, in terms of technological changes in the printing field and it defines the term "printed independent magazine". The main contribution of the work is a mapping of the Central European independent magazine scene, which has not been thoroughly examined in any academic work yet. The text puts this scene in the international context, and it points out the certain specifics which are associated with Central Europe.

Floods associated with extreme precipitation are one of the most serious natural hazards, which produce substantial human and socio-economic losses in central Europe. One way to reduce the impact of flooding is by increasing preparedness with better flood forecasts and warnings, which is not possible without a proper understanding of physical processes leading to a flood hazard. However, frequent research on floods in relation to causal precipitation and synoptic conditions is usually carried out regionally, although some events often affect areas of a size of entire countries or even larger. The thesis was focused exactly on these large-scale precipitation and flood events that occurred in the second half of the 20th century and then until 2013, for which the size of the affected area is as crucial in the extremity assessment as the magnitude of flood discharges or precipitation totals. The extremity indices used for the assessment of extreme precipitation and flood events connected both aspects. The larger area of interest defined within central Europe allowed examining the spatial structure of events, the differences between them, and their relation to conditions in the atmosphere. To connect the extremes of precipitation with extremes in atmospheric conditions, the causal circulation was...

The thesis deals with thought, mentality and conceptions of the higher education students. It focuses especially on discussions and controversies between students and party, state or universities authorities and aims at frictions which spread in official discourse and arose from student demands on more space for autonomous activity. Its main concern is the way in which these controversies were related to power transformations in the Central-European dictatorship since 1956. As an example of young intelligentsia, activists of youth and student organizations at higher education institutions in Warsaw, Prague and Bratislava have been chosen. The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part researches on the conceptions of intimate, especially problems of youth sexuality, student marriage and living conditions of young families. The second part deals with the conceptions of equality in relation to centralized work-placement of graduates. The power authorities in the state-socialist society laid stress on social equality of all citizens, but paradoxically it produced strong inequality at a local level and undermined work, social and transnational mobility. The third parts researches on conceptions of difference. In this case, authorities claimed generation unity and culture uniformity for the whole...