PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC—Czech Radio reports that researchers from the City of Prague Museum excavated the city’s Wenceslas Square and St. Valentine’s Gate, where they found a wooden doorstep and traces of the city’s medieval ramparts. Analysis of the oak step suggests the tree used to make it had been cut down around the year A.D. 1239. In Wenceslas Square, the team, led by archaeologist Petr Starec, found evidence of the market where horses were traded and agricultural products and crafts were sold from the mid-fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries. Starec said the markets and the dwellings in the area produced a lot of waste, including the bones of cattle, sheep, and goats; pottery; and horseshoes, so the muck was periodically covered with layers of pebbles from the Vltava River. A two-inch-tall Christian statue depicting the Virgin Mary holding the child Jesus was also recovered from the layers of Wenceslas Square. Starec thinks this valuable item must have been accidentally dropped by a wealthy person. “There is a little metal device on her back,” he said, “so it was probably attached to some object, perhaps a home altar.” For more, go to “Off The Grid: Prague.”
