Slovakia's archaeology renaissance
17 March 2025
As a child, I dreamed of becoming a historian or archaeologist, imagining far-off places rather than discoveries in Slovakia. Yet, the findings of the last few months prove otherwise and span centuries - it was a few too many to ignore a pattern.
At a known archaeological site believed to be used by a shaman, experts uncovered a rock imprint of a tusk, likely from a prehistoric forest elephant that roamed Europe until 45,000 years ago. These elephants were common in western and southern Europe during the last glacial period.
In Rusovce, a Bratislava borough, archaeologists found Slovakia's first Roman aqueduct just 80cm underground. Alongside were luxury Roman ceramics from today's France and Germany, window glass panels, and an inscribed brick linking the site to Austria's Carnuntum.
To conclude this short journey through history, let's look at the "newest" piece historians found in the last few months. A 500-year-old bust of a woman from the world-famous Italian sculptor Donatello made headlines. The bust, once dismissed as a 19th-century replica, turned out to be a Donatello original. Left in a children's home, it was drawn on and even used as a football. Only in 2019, a historian found it again and started to investigate until she reached a museum in Florence, which confirmed it to be 99.9% Donatello.
 | Tamara Kanuchova Archaeology isn't just digging with spades, it allows for a lot of unnoticed technological progress. In Slovakia, geoinformatics experts use advanced laser scanning – similar to bat navigation – to reveal hidden sites beneath forest cover. Meanwhile, a Slovak hospital took a more conventional approach, performing a CT scan on a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy to explore the potential of analysing bones, diseases, and even the cause of death. |
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