Archaeological Finds

Archaeological research performed between 2017 and 2020 presented a great opportunity for significant expansion of knowledge on the castle. As expected, it brought a great number of movable archaeological finds that clarify our understanding of everyday life within the fortification walls of Helfštýn over the past centuries, facilitating direct contact with past.

The most numerous among the archaeological finds were kitchenware fragments that were dumped together with other waste in the area of the western outworks and the northern and eastern palace terrace, thus artificially raising the ground level over several centuries. Parts of ceramic vessels, but also stove tiles and construction ceramics like bricks, floor tiles, and roofing also became part of backfills of old Gothic cellars and their vaults, or were used as levelling under the floors of the individual palace chambers.

The oldest settlement of the hill in the High Middle Ages in the very beginning of the castle is documented by a concentration of ceramic fragments at the cultural layer over the substrate in the south-eastern corner of the palace courtyard. Research in this part was done in 1996 and in 2019. The ceramic collection found there includes a number of so-called corniced edges of pots decorated with horizontal grooves. These are mostly the more advanced variants that can be dated back to the turn of the 13th century, while a small part of the fragments contains archaic forms from the second half of the 13th century.

As regards form, the ceramic fragments also comprised storage bins, pitchers, trays, and lids in addition to the pots. They are twisted earthenware, mostly reductively fired, with distinct graphite content in some pieces. In addition to common, late-medieval, and early-modern production of kitchenware and table ceramics, a remarkable discovery was made of a fragment of a glazed goblet arguably decorated with alchemist signs. The archaeological rescue research in the castle and its surroundings was also complemented with precautional detector survey carried out by the archaeologists of the Comenius Museum in Přerov, together with their colleagues involved in the Precautional Archaeology project in the Olomouc Region. A large amount of small metallic objects were found during this survey.

Coins represent time-based materials. In many cases, they help archaeologists date the archaeological situations uncovered. In the case of the extensive collection of numismatic finds, it can be concluded provisionally that these are mostly small silver coins from the 15th and 16th centuries. The oldest include Moravian single-sided rectangular stamped coins with an eagle and the letters S and S–G, minted in the Brno town mint probably between 1423 and 1435, and Hungarian Parvus coins of Sigismund of Luxembourg (1387–1437). More rare was the find of a denarius of the Patriarch of Aquileia, Louis of Teck (1412–1420/1439). The bulk of the find comprised especially single-sided round coins with a lion minted in the Kutná Hora mint during the reign of Bohemian King George of Poděbrady (1458–1471) and heavy denarii (called white coins) and hellers (called small or black coins) of Vladislaus II (1471–1516), Louis II (1516–1526), and Ferdinand I. (1526–1564). Rather frequent were the finds of coins issued by the Bishop of Passau, Ernest of Bavaria (1517–1540) and pfennigs of the Archbishops of Salzburg. The collection also contains several mintages from Görlitz. The more recent part of the collection comprised coins of the King of Sweden and Poland, Sigismund III Vasa (1587–1632), and Ferdinand II (1619–1637). Falling within the category of special-purpose mintages, numerical coins, which resemble actual coins, were used as basic calculation means in the medieval and Renaissance accounting.

The finds of medieval and early-Renaissance weapons at Helfštýn include plenty of ammunition for ranged weapons, such as iron arrowheads for bows and crossbows. In the case of firearms, numerous lead bullets were uncovered, especially for muskets and pistols. A unique find was half of a brass casting mould for 10-millimetre lead pistol bullets. This object, together with frequent finds of lead bullets with uncut risers, documents the production of ammunition directly on the castle grounds. Deformed bullets represent used ammunition. The category of firearms is also represented by several fragments of split iron barrels of hand cannons. These guns can be dated back to the 15th and the first half of the 16th century. The metallic finds also include various shapes of plate clothing patches mainly decorated with vegetable motifs. These trimming articles were made of brass, while some pieces had remnants of gilding on their surface. A part of a corrugated plate trimming with the motif of a lion between vines is among the unique finds at Helfštýn. A wealth of small buckles, patches, trimmings, and buttons illustrate the level of clothing and the trends of the highest social elites residing in the Helfštýn Castle palaces during the 15th and 16th centuries. In addition to the castle administrators, these also included members of the most important aristocratic families in Moravia (the House of Kravaře, House of Sovinec, House of Kostka of Postupice, House of Pernštejn, House of Ludanice, and House of Bruntál & Vrbno).

Objects of a religious nature are represented by the find of a brass Latin crucifix rendered as the Tree of Life with a three-dimensional figure of Christ Crucified, above whose head is an unfolded scroll with the inscription INRI. This crucifix, with two eyelets, was originally part of a rosary.