d female cemeteries. This may well fall in with observa-tions gathered at the cemetery site in the Lumbe gardens of Prague Castle, dating to the lOth— 1 Ith Century, containing an extraordinary quantity of gold and silver Ornaments and very likely to enshrine remains of persons who once lived close to the court of the first dukes of Bohemia. In fact, most of those interred here are women or young and therefore most probably not fully privileged men (Smetänka • Hrdlicka - Blajerovä 1973; 1974). The significance of marriage which may greatly aid the social ascent of the individuals concerned and which may be (even decisively) infiuenced by the social centre increases considerably (on such societies, characterized frequently by the Crow-Omaha kinship type, cf. now Thomas 1987, esp. pp. 409—410). I believe that all these features may well be applicable to the early social elite surrounding the dukes of Bohemia. Not even the major role of the centre in the matrimonial sphere may be excluded a priori: a curious clause from a royal privilege for the Olomouc church of 1256 (CDB Vjl : 84, 157 : 10- 12) forbids ex-pressedly the interference of holders of royal Offices with concluding or Suspension of matrimonial ties as such proceedings were the exclusive prerogative of ecclesiastical circles.

A Situation which seems to be entirely different is encountered if we leave the precincts enclosed by the ramparts of ducal castles both at the centre and at the periphery of the Premysl-dynasty state. Both the geo-graphical and the social landscape of Contemporary Bohemia are characterized by settlements (probably cor-responding to communities) bearing names composed of names of persons with the suffix -ici (the •ovici suffix is here considered as a variant of the basic ‘ici form; on these cf. Smilauer 1963, 106, § 367—1; Michälek 1980; Curin 1964). In the area of the Western Slavs, such a name has been recorded as early as the lOth Century by the chronicle of bishop Thietmar of Merseburg (Holtzmann 1935 VI: 50, p. 336 11. 15- 17 - “de tribu, quae Buzici dicitur”), paradoxically enough, for the group of des-cendants of one Bucco or Burchard, clearly of German origin. Thietmar’s terminology is likely to suggest that what he really meant was a lineage starting with Mr. Bucco. In the Bohemian milieu, the most extensive description of such a social grouping is supplied by Cosmas the chronicler who speaks on several occassions of the un-fortunate group of VrSovici, of which several generations seem to have been massacred under various pretexts in the course of the 1 Ith— 12th centuries, though Cosmas’s “gens Muncia” and “gens Tepca”, interpreted in New Czech as Munici and TSptici, may well belong here. The Vrüovci collective consisted of at least three interrelated branches which may well have been collateral, at least in time as the degree to which they were linked by kinship ties cannot be elucidated from Cosmas’s text (Bo2ej, his son Mutina and his two junior sons; Nemoj, a relative to Bozej; Öä5, his son Bozej and his son Borut; 6esta and his son Jan). A later source names one “Detricus de genere Wrsowic” (CDB 11: 359, 382:26-27, confected c. 1250 to 1300 but with reliable older information) but I see no way of fitting himrinto the group illuminated by the text of Cosmas’s chronicleT Though^ the individuals of this group are not always referred to by their patronymic(?)

ame, their affiliation to their particular group is at any raoment publicly known. The families are apparently patrilineal and probably patrilocal, adult sons assume Partner roles of their fathers. Cosmas had an inherent interest in genealogy and it is thus somewhat conspicuous that he mentions nowhere the theoretically possible an-cestor of the whole group the name of whom may be re-constructed as Vrs. The same lack of common knowledge of a forefather (?) of a given social group was displayed later on by Gerlach or Jarloch, chronicler of the end of 12th and beginning of 13th Century, who referred to a grouping which he himself called “DSpoltici” (in this form in his Latin text, name derived from the personal name Theobald in its Czech form of DSpolt), bringing it to the notice of his readers that these were descendants of DSpolt II, son of DSpolt I (FRB II p. 461; Hefmamkj/ - Fiala 1957, 111). It is thus a question which feature of the social landscape was more real — the ancestors or the Contemporary groups who might have constructed the genealogies with an eye to their own coherence, perhaps even as artificial devices? Of course it may be argued that such Czech names appear in Cosmas’s chronicle in a Latinized form; there is a theoretical possibility that, for instance, Kojata Vse-boric (Kojata son of Vlebor) could have become “Coiata filius Vssebori” in the Latin text. This is unlikely as Cosmas actually named one of his figures with a patro-nymic name (Vit 2eliboric or VSeboric: Bretholz 1923, II: 40, p. 144 1.31; Blähovä-Fiala 1975, 126).

Who were the persons bearing the names providing the basic components of the -ici toponyms? In view of their high frequency (cf. infra), the relationships between these persons and collectives deriving their names from them must have belonged to the most common ones of their kind. If we surmise that the most usual kinship ties were those the absence of which identified the person in question as a particularly conspicuous feature, then the most common social relationships of this age were such that connected the individuals to their ancestors (an absence of such a background resulting in the personal name Bezd&d: Svoboda 1964, p. 101 § 49) and to their matemal and paternal uncles (personal names Bezstryj and Bezuj, ibid. p. 90 § 48, interpretation of kinship terms in: Nemec etal. 1980, 76— 89). Among all the personal names of early medieval Bohemia, these are the only cases involving elements of kinship terminology (except the PN NesvaCil, cf. infra). As, then, ancestors of social groupings are, though quite rarely, referred to in the written sources (CDBII: 359, 382:22— 23 — two brothers “de stirpe pre-dicti Chotyemyri”). I believe that the most likely answer to the abovementioned question is that the persons referred to in the -ici toponyms see'm to have been considered by members of the resident communities as their ancestors.

Let us now proceed to the most difficult question of property relationship within these social groupings. Of course, most of the material culled from written sources will pertain of such collectives of higher social Standing, though similar practices are likely to have characterized (at least some of) the Iower-standing groups as well, though the evidence to substantiate this is very scanty. I am afraid that the two isolated data concerning gifts of five villages to the VySehrad chapter of canons by Nemoj of the VrSovci grouping (CDB 1:100 pp. 105— 106)