Píč – Niederle – Buchtela: zápas o českou archeologii na přelomu 19. a 20. století (Památce Josefa Ladislava Píče po 100 letech od jeho úmrtí)

Professor Josef Ladislav Píč (1847–1911) was one of the founders of modern Czech archaeology: from the end of 1880s up to his death he was widely known as the most outstanding and dominant personality in Czech archaeology (especially in the National Museum and Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts), the most active organizer of field survey and excavations. His lifework Antiquities of Bohemia (1899–1909) has collected and systemized the whole archaeological material then known from this country. Píč as the head of the “museum school” attempted to depict a historical image of Czech prehistory and early history, to which he subordinated archaeological information. His opponents from the “university school” (Prof. L. Niederle, K. Buchtela) concentrated their attention to the “pure” positivist archaeology without historiographical ambition. The struggle for relative chronology and ethnic interpretations splitted Czech archaeology to the two strictly hostile parties, it nevertheless helped to clarify the basic problems of Bohemian prehistory and its archaeological taxonomy, and to systematize the opinions of both the sides. After Píč’s suicide, the “university school” overruled Czech archaeology for many decades; now the time comes to commemorate Píč’s role in forming modern Czech archaeology, to appreciate his searching for living people behind the archaeological sources and his progressive solving of various prehistoric problems.