ABSTRACT
Prague is situated in a basin through which the River Vltava flows, forming a wide meander and leaving a depression to the north beside the rocky ridge of the Letna hill. The Municipal Museum of Prague and the Archaeological Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences have been responsible for the research programme under the central control of the Prague Archaeological Commission, which was established in 1969. In addition to the settlements, which lay close to the developing urban area of Prague, and which eventually became absorbed within it, archaeological research, largely through rescue excavation, has focused also on a number of rural settlements in the hinterland. The modern increase in archaeological knowledge holds out hopes that the whole picture of Prague's development, worked out by generations of historians, will be more complete by the end of the century, so that a new synthesis of the city's history can be written.
