Archaeological Skansen Opened in Slovak Village

The approximately 7,000-year history of the settlement of the village of Včelince near the town of Tornal in the Revuk district is presented in a new archaeological skansen.

SME writes about it.

At five sites located in the centre of the village and directly at the sites of settlements and archaeological finds, visitors can learn about various interesting facts from information stands, as well as view exact copies of vessels and other historical artefacts.

Two people are mainly responsible for the creation of the archaeological scan.

The first of them is Vaclav Furmanek, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV), who is the ideological father of the archaeological survey.

The second is Józef Stankoviansky, managing director of Art Archeology and director of the archaeological museum in Horná Legota, who was the direct implementer.

"Professor Furmanek offered me to take on the project, and I agreed. Preparations lasted about a year and a half, as we had to focus the ceramics, make copies, columns and everything else," Stankoviansky explained to the newspaper.

He added that there should be more benches near the stations, and the project will culminate in a book about the history of the Včelince settlement.

It is to be presented during the Tornal Town Days in October 2023.

The project, with a total budget of 15,000 euros, was also implemented thanks to financial support of 6,400 euros from the BBSK Development Agency through a membership fee to the regional tourism organisation Gemer.

According to his own words, Vaclav Furmanek first visited Včelince in 1963, when he was still a penultimate year student at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Brno.

"I had a Čezeta scooter, so I was 'mobile'. The village was very well known from literature, but it was the first time I got acquainted with its cadastre, the Slana River, and the findings that had already been published," the archaeologist recalls. 

In his own words, he considers the Včelince site to be an archive of the prehistory of the whole of Slovakia and the Carpathian Basin.

The mayor of Včelince, Lubomír Kostur, praised the contribution to the creation of the archaeological scan.

"This is a pilot project that has not yet been implemented in our region. Thank you for presenting our history in this way. We recognise the exceptional nature of the findings that prove the presence of settlements in certain areas of prehistoric times, and we are very pleased that we have managed to obtain resources to implement this educational trail," he said.

"For me, as a vice mayor, this is special because here I am returning to my profession as an archaeologist. I am happy that I have colleagues from the Archaeological Institute of the Slovak Republic, who conducted archaeological excavations in the region in the late 1980s and early 1990s and were able to appreciate such a unique place," said Jan Belyak, Vice President of the Bansko Bystrica Self-Governing Region (BBSK).

According to him, he is happy that information about the archaeological research will be available to visitors in this way.