 Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to present ideas about comparative approach applied on the centers dated to the Iron Age and Illy Medieval period, which was discussed and prepared together with Alshbetta Danilisova and Jan Marik, both from Arkodzikou Institute in Prague. This presentation is theoretically and especially based on the ideas presented already here by Manuel Fennan Götz, Izzy Machacek and Stefan Eichel in the first half of this session. Even we agree with Izzy Machacek to cause this place agglomeration. We are talking about centers just, you know, the same title. It doesn't matter center agglomeration for us is the same. A few seconds about the outline of this presentation. I hope we will get to the end in time and it will be the happy end, but we will see. Anyway, our approach is not so sophisticated as was us were previous three presenters, but I think it will give us some results and thoughts about it. And at the final we would like to talk about advantages and pitfalls of our comparative approach. Why do we compare what was our motivation? To fill missing parts in the data, to find inspiration between the Iron Age sites, Illy Medieval sites, to see cultural history, reasons, organization of the society to try to explain in the comparative way. To establish common trends in cultural history perspective, for example, like is the fortification, you know, fortified places, opida or Illy Medieval centers agglomerations as presented or are presented in literature as you can see. To have a better view of the development, let's remind the situation before the time when opida fortified centers, Illy Medieval fortified centers emerge. As we can see much better information about the development, about the ancestors we have in the Iron Age, a long tradition of research, comparable information etc. bring much more complex view about the meaning of analyzed societies and phenomena. Illy Medieval period, although it looks sophisticated and clear, is in the region of the central Europe still at the beginning, my point of view. In both periods there are expected 45 settlements of the higher society, but systematic excavation was not yet done and some of them were barely bigger than hectare, I am talking about the Illy Medieval centers of course. All the geographic position and social hierarchy is widely discussed as for Ellis last the known fortified site for Gusty's book which was probably just for short time fortified place. The existence of this of centers is more based on desire than on facts. The last hope are Slavic Ava fittings which are assumed especially in the higher society social class, therefore we expect some fortified sites and perhaps even the centers where the fittings come from, but we are missing the information about the connection of the artifacts and fortifications sites where we are finding them, so we cannot put this to phenomena to the same period etc. It means that for example we have these finds from the places where are the remains of all the fortifications for example from Bronze Age and sometimes the younger fortifications, but we cannot connect them together it's the case of the Special Bohemia region. Except the Slavic Ava fittings obtain mostly from prospections, metal detector prospecting we have nothing better hope to identify places more important than other in this Ellis Slavs and Old Slavs period. Just for just few examples of typical representatives of the Iron Age and early medial ancestors and examples of Slavic Ava fittings from typical fittings. The Iron Age or Latin Slavic Opeda developed or the begin in the second century BC image well known or are well known and they are known from written sources and from Arcogeco excavations abroad all Europe. We have clear idea about how it all worked, at least that's what it looked like for me sometimes. Mostly before I have started to ask how it works and if there is a chance to use it as an analogy and it's a vessel. Anyway Opeda are very complex places, very large places, organized, delimited, cosmopolitan and yet with a strong bond to agricultural production. Although their former constructions looks like densely built and populated places it is so cold or as we heard from some low density they have has a low density rubenism or call them in this point of view. This reconstruction of Manking showed us the different point of view where except the typical demonstration of military, defensive power, rampart and gates we can see inside densely and sparsely settled areas, enclosured households, fields, kettle enclosures, sanctuary etc. all together on a large space. Elimitable fortified centers, agglomerations appeared in the 9th century. I was looking for some fine comparison but did not find any like you know they appeared like a mountain in a fork for the plane in front of the plane but they emerged very quickly and on a large area at the center of Europe. As we can see on the list of attributes there is a lot of question marks because the status of knowledge is still low. We are thinking that it's what it is. Someone can oppose but the reality is that we know a lot about few rather we think that we know something. And of course we know almost nothing about the best of the great imbalance in knowledge exists between fortification and internet space chronology etc. In much more cases we know from the central central Europe from the region of the former game Moravia for example. The research is focused on the few but we have much money. The positive thing is that in the last two decades rather in the last 15 years much work has been done and we have moved forward at least where we know a lot. As we can hear from Yezimah Hatcher for example the relating of the emerging of the fortifications in the last quarter of the 9th century we can say that in the case of Mikuczic and Stajanistok we can in a specific way expect 140 feet of fight period of existence of these centers. Mikuczic term suggests probably a few decades not 100 years as for example in Iron Age period. In comparison with Menhing and Iron Age low density places on this reconstruction of Pohansko we can see one part with gates, enclosure to Pransley residence with church, then with fence-enclosured households, yards, cattle enclosures, maybe gardens, but of course this site for example was not so large as Manhing so we are expecting the fields and the surrounding Adyanset area. Nice picture right? Still a picture, static and still a lot of question about the functionality of this whole place in comparison with, for example, all the area. But perfect case to compare similarity and then find a direction and create a better world at least in the past. But even some of this phenomena accused in both period there is still a lot of question of the meaning of these presented structures. We were discussing together with my colleagues the, I mean besides has some urban functions which we know from ancient cities and early complex societies. Here's some perspective presented in the literature, what are the connections, for example, between political processes and urbanization early complex societies, binding power, rulers and allies, etc. The definition of urbanism or what exactly is the definition of urban, how to study, define the level of urbanism. As we can see here the definition is frequently based on typology. Place must fulfill specific conditions. It's both similar for the Iron Age and for early medieval, for example in sixties and eighties was a very popular example. We have example from early medieval cases from Stademnostorn also from Mikučice Pohansko by Wilhelm Hrubi and Bosivoj Dostal who works with some points defining the level of urbanism and of course if we can call these sites early cities and so. But this typological point of view is a little bit static so we try to use a poetic approach of these urban attributes which allows us to overcome the static problem of typological approach. We work with attributes and which can be applied on the data and of course by comparing different attributes we learn about the level of urban individual societies. The pitfall is that projecting interpretation is done by proxies. Basically we work with four main areas. It's a red one like demography impact on hinterland, urban structure and planning, urban services and communities, areas or others of this level of approach and they were spread to much more detailed proxies. This is the detailed view of our proxies of course and there will be a lot of discussion if it is what is it and if we are able or we can identify presented specifics and our records or interpret them in the right or use them in the right view or meaning. As you can see for example we abandoned some terms like long-distance trade etc and used more long-distance contacts and a lot of things are a bit present absence. We put the sites side-by-side and as we can see in this table separate areas of the iron and elemental age sites and some of them are marked with a different color because they're older and younger in the iron age but in fact there is no significant difference between them between these whole periods we can see that mostly the same occurrence. From this point of view we cannot compare the quality and quantity of the selected proxies and of course then the misinterpretation and this mean as I already mentioned the long-distance trade or long-distance contacts as it was here on this conference presented in the difference section in magic that artifacts we are finding and our centers must not be the presence of a trade but just traveling the people contacts etc. This is just a slide to show that the open agglomeration based on this grass where is the long-length wide index against the area of the features of the houses and gathering structures etc or the functional structures in opida from Stareh Radisco and of course from a different set that the open agglomeration in comparison with the open agglomeration or the open agglomeration has no signs visible signs which define them. The status is done by a function and opida is adjusted as status. With the help of several case studies we intend to demonstrate that the strength of the comparative approach lies especially in revealing the major development trends or principles of a long-distance nature such as basic economic systems while the risk of misinterpretations are associated chiefly with limited knowledge of social hierarchy political strategies and cultural norms. So it brings us to the end. This is fast. For example the typical long-distance perspective is represented with agricultural tools which are for the whole period from the iron age to the elementary age almost the same. The pitfalls of this comparative perspective is that the identification of fast structures there is an identification of fast structures based on external characters assuming the same representations of different systems. The differences in urban and rural settlement for example in Ryan region and in wider middle of the new area for example the remunization broad fields per mine structures stone buildings communications networks but they were not they not represent the elite places or the central places but was just a long tradition. Conclusions cities and urban phenomena exhibit considerable variation around the world and through history presented cases are just examples of some urban traditions and cities can be highly or centers can be highly variable within a given urban tradition difficult to search for the typical variation is one reason why definitions are difficult to apply to modern cities and is one of the strongest arguments in favor of polytheistic attribute-based approach. Thank you for watching.