Daily life in Brno during the 14th century

In Brno, Moravia, traces of everyday life survive beneath houses and courtyards: cellars, rubbish pits, broken vessels and plant remains. These finds reveal differences between households, while property records occasionally bring named residents into view.

Homes differed from street to street

Excavations at Josefská 7, beside the town walls, found houses with cellars and refuse pits from the second quarter of the 13th century onward. The researchers found no evidence of masonry construction there before the end of the Middle Ages, and the street frontage was not completely built up. This gives a useful corrective to imagining every 14th-century household inside a substantial stone house. It describes one excavated property, however, rather than a standard home shared by all residents. Research on Josefská 7.

Managing rubbish and the courtyard

At the property now called Náměstí Svobody 8, archaeologists identified a timber-lined waste pit associated with the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries. During the 14th century, accumulating rubbish raised the courtyard surface, which was repeatedly consolidated with stone. Maintaining usable outdoor space was therefore a practical household concern; that interpretation follows from the successive surfaces rather than from a surviving account of someone’s daily chores. Archaia Brno’s excavation account.

Food and fuel leave small traces

A study of plant remains from 13 historic Brno plots examined deposits, chiefly from cesspits, spanning the high medieval and postmedieval periods. Seeds and other plant remains helped researchers investigate changing plant use; wood and charcoal provided evidence about supplies of these materials. Such deposits make ordinary consumption and household provisioning visible alongside more conspicuous buildings and luxury objects. Archaeobotanical review of Brno house plots.

The study’s broad date range matters. Its summary does not establish a particular family’s 14th-century menu, portion sizes or meal times. Reconstructing those details would require the dated assemblages and their full analysis.

Drinking vessels and unequal access to goods

Archaia Brno’s glass research identifies beakers, bottles and cups in assemblages dated 1270–1350. For 1350–1400, it records abundant table bottles and the gradual appearance of products attributed to Bohemian or Moravian glassworks. Some exceptional forms came from the area interpreted as a possible margrave’s residence. These finds connect household objects with production and exchange beyond the individual property. Glass from medieval Brno.

They do not show that everyone drank from fine glass. Rich deposits and unusual vessels can give disproportionate visibility to privileged households. The same project’s discussion of glass among less wealthy urban groups belongs to 1400–1450 and should not simply be transferred to the preceding century.

Named women in a house's history

Property history adds people to the archaeological picture. At Náměstí Svobody 8, the account names Anežka, widow of Jakub of Rohr, and their daughter Anna from 1367. After her mother’s death, around 1371, Anna sold the house to Václav Schirmer and his heirs. This is a specific example of women appearing in the ownership history of a prominent urban property. It cannot establish how much control every woman in Brno exercised over housing or household money. The property’s recorded owners.

What this evidence can tell us

The strongest picture here is of households using and maintaining distinct spaces, acquiring vessels and other supplies, and leaving waste that survives beneath later buildings. Specific discoveries can support specific claims; they cannot supply a complete timetable for an unnamed medieval resident. Modern street addresses identify excavation sites and should not be mistaken for medieval addresses.

Explore other places in the Medieval Daily Life Locations collection.