Badania archeologiczne w Sukiennicach i na Rynku Głównym w Krakowie

Abstract

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY AT THE CLOTH HALL AND IN MAIN MARKET SQUARE IN KRAKOW

The Cloth Hall (Sukiennice) is the oldest commercial building located in the central section of Main Market Square (Rynek Główny); its origins date back to the town charter granted to Kraków in 1257. Also, the Cloth Hall is the only secular facility that has survived from the second half of the 13th century, or from the 14th century, to the beginning of the 21st century. The only hitherto surviving relic of yet another structure that also dated back to the early years following the town charter, namely the Town Hall, has been the Tower, built probably in the early 14th century. The other commercial facilities built in the Middle Ages and connected with the function of Main Market Square in Kraków (such as the Town Hall, the Granary [Spichlerz], the Rich Stalls [Kramy Bogate], the Great and Small Scales [Mała Waga & Wielka Waga], and the Shoemakers’ Stalls [Kramy Szewskie]) were pulled down in the 19th century. Only their foundations and basement walls have survived. Part of the former cellars underneath the Gothic Town Hall were rebuilt in the 1960s and adapted to house a theatre and a restaurant. The stone and brick structures in the Square were surrounded by various wooden stalls and stands. The archaeological survey of the medieval buildings in Main Market Square as well as the strata and the usability levels formed next to these structures was undertaken in the period between the two World Wars. The survey was connected with the construction and renovation works. In 1931 an archaeological survey was carried out at the construction site of a transformer station adjacent to the Cloth Hall; in 1934 another survey accompanied the works on drying the Romanesque walls of the Church of St Adalbert, while in 1943 and 1944 – the construction of water tanks at the Town Hall Tower and in front of St Mary’s Basilica; in the 1950s a survey was also conducted during the works on expanding the sewage system and building the central heating system on the northern and western sides of the Cloth Hall. The first regular archaeological excavations in Main Market Square were carried out only in the years 1961–1963, when the plaza’s surface was redeveloped. The excavations included in particular the Romanesque Church of St Adalbert, the Cloth Hall, the Great and the Small Scales, and the Rich Stalls. Parallel to these works, reconnaissance sounding surveys and preservation works were also conducted at the sites of utility cuttings. The walls of early Gothic stalls were then discovered under the eastern part of the Cloth Hall and under the Rich Stalls which have often been interpreted as the earliest cloth hall in Kraków. In 1975 a regular archaeological and architectural survey was carried out in the main hall and cellars of the Cloth Hall in connection with resurfacing the inside of the building and performing extensive conservation works. The survey resulted in discovering more relics of the early Gothic commercial facilities located underneath the eastern part of the Cloth Hall, documenting the remnants of the wooden structures that preceded the current hall in the Square, as well as identifying the relics of a pre-charter necropolis and very rich strata dating back to the early and late medieval period. The archaeological surveys carried out in the Square and at the Cloth Hall throughout the following years have only been aimed at the preservation of the previously discovered objects. The surveys were connected with the predesign works (1994), yet another redevelopment of the sewage and power supply systems (1996), the renovation of the basement in the Church of St Adalbert (1992) and at the Town Hall Tower (1996–1997), and eventually with another resurfacing works in the Square and building a museum in the underground vaults at the Cloth Hall, the basements of the Rich Stalls and the Great Scales, and underneath the north-eastern section of the plaza (2002–2010). In the years 2005–2006 and 2009–2010 a regular archaeological survey was also carried out at the Cloth Hall by Kraków’s Archaeological Museum. The survey covered the “cross” (the central section of the hall with a crossing of routes from the four sides of the world) and the northern part of the hall, as well as the area adjacent to the building in the north. Also, permanent scientific supervision was performed during the resurfacing works and the construction of service ducts in the basements under the eastern and western sections of the northern part of the Cloth Hall. Rich strata were discovered and documented during these works, dating back to the precharter era as well as the late medieval and modern times. The strata had formed four basic series of stratifi ed deposits: a. The latest series was built of diff erent sand and rubble fills with the total thickness of up to as much as 100 cm [ca 3.3 ft]. The fills had been formed during the Square redevelopment and resurfacing works in the late 19th century (between 1875 and 1879), in the 1960s, and during the earthworks carried out in the early 21st century. The said fi lls are mostly deposited at the location of the cultural layers dating back to the span between the late 14th or early 15th centuries and the mid-20th century. b. The second latest series of the strata was formed in the early stage of the Late Middle Ages in connection with the construction of commercial facilities in the years 1376–1390 (the Cloth Hall), or in the early 15th century (the Rich Stalls). Different levelling fi lls were identifi ed within that series, having thickness of up to 200 cm [ca 6.6 ft], along with the traces of dirt floors and non-surfaced cultural layers, the relics of construction layers (mortar with stone fl akes and brick chips), and excavations for foundations. When the construction works had been fi nished, the roof of these fi lls had been surfaced with cobblestones and wooden fl ooring. Information about this stage of the works at the Cloth Hall appeared probably in the written records from the years 1390–1392. The surfaces built after the construction of the Cloth Hall had been fi nished– and after the building had been reconstructed during the Renaissance – were wholly destroyed in the modern era. Only small cobbled patches have survived in the northern part of the Hall and in the western section of the “cross”. c. The second earliest series was formed by the characteristic sand and clay deposits with a huge variety of organic remains. Dating back to the post-charter period, i.e. probably the second half of the 13th century and the early 14th century, the deposits were connected to the construction and functioning of wooden stalls and the earliest stone and brick commercial facilities. These deposits included meticulously built cobbled surfaces, used probably until the second half of the 14th century, the cultural layers with non-surfaced dirt floor, and the relics of buildings, such as wooden floorings and ground beams. The cobbled surface dating back to the late 13th or the early 14th centuries included a very deep gutter which had been used to channel rainwater and sewage southwards from the plaza situated at the exit of Św. Jana Street. d. The earliest series was composed of the deposits occurring above the roof of the bedrock. The deposits had formed the cultural layer of the studied territory before the charter of 1257. These were mostly sand deposits, some of them being substantially clayey, containing traces of burnt material in the form of pieces of charcoal, ashes, and scorched clay. Their occurrence has often been associated with the Tartar invasion of 1241. Also, these deposits are linked with diff erent residential and household-related  structures embedded into the roof of the bedrock sand(waste hollows, post holes, hearths), and with the early medieval graves discovered in the main hall and the “cross” of the Cloth Hall. The graves were probably part of the vast necropolis that had stretched in the northern, north-western and western directions from the Romanesque Church of St Adalbert, reaching the Great Scales, the Cloth Hall, and the strip between the Cloth Hall and the exit of Św. Jana St. In the post-charter period the area of the cemetery had been reduced to the land adjacent to the church. The existence of that cemetery was connected with the mysterious graveyard objects a relic of which is the burial (?) of a horse discovered in the central part of the Cloth Hall. The recent survey at the Cloth Hall revealed the foundations of early-Gothic stone and brick buildings, the foundations and walls of the hall-like facility built towards the end of the 14th century, the walls of the Renaissance partition wall that enclosed the inside of the hall in the north, and the foundations connected to the overhaul of the Cloth Hall carried out with the supervision of reputed Polish architect Tomasz Pryliński in the years 1875–1879.