Enthesopathies and physical activity in the Great Moravian population (9th-10th century) with regard to social status and living conditions.

7 ABSTRACT The occurrence of enthesopathies is associated with muscle insertion sites and physical activities. The aim of this work is focused on two basic target areas. In the methodical section, I tested two methods of enthesopathy evaluation (Crubézy, 1988; Villotte, 2006) and I monitored the influence of age and physical stress on the incidence of enthesopathies in a documented skeletal collection from Greece. The main aim was then the evaluation of enthesopathies in the Great Moravian population from the settlement agglomeration Mikulčice-Valy (9th -10th century) using the selected method and the subsequent interpretation of the results attained, taking into consideration the archaeological facts relating to the given locality. Based on the observed degrees of concordance between the repeated evaluations, I used Villotte's method (2006) for final evaluation. I proved the correlation between the prevalence of enthesopathies and age in individuals from a recently documented skeletal collection. I was unable to demonstrate the influence of physical activity on the incidence of enthesopathies. This is apparently due to the small number of individuals with manual and non-manual occupations. In individuals from the Mikulčice settlement agglomeration, I recorded a demonstrable difference between individual..