The exhibition entitled Journey to the Prehistory of Blansko is located in four rooms on the ground floor of Blansko Castle, each of which represents a specific archaeological period. As the name of the exposition implies, visitors progress against the flow of time from the youngest periods to the oldest ones. The first room is devoted to the early medieval and Roman periods, then continues through the Iron and Bronze Ages to the Stone Age, to which the last room is devoted. In each room, in addition to the general characteristics of the period, key themes related to the Blansko region are discussed. For the early Middle Ages, this is particularly the metallurgy and iron industry identified by excavations in the central part of the karst. For the Iron Age, the ritual cave in the Bull Rock is a key issue, for the Bronze Age the site around Bořitov is highlighted and for the Stone Age it is the use of caves especially during the older Neolithic and Palaeolithic periods when the Moravian Karst was inhabited by Neanderthals. The exposition uses collection objects, archaeological findings, from the museum's collections, but also loans from the Moravian Museum, the Archaeological Institute of the Academy of Sciences Brno, the Museum of the Boskovice Region or the Homeland Museum in Olomouc. The complex topic of the prehistoric settlement of the Blansko region has not been dealt with in terms of expositions or publications, although it was in Blansko that the oldest remains of human societies were discovered in the caves of the Moravian Karst in the second half of the 19th century, thanks to the personality of Jindřich Wankel, known as the father of Moravian archaeology. The specific feature of the region's archaeology is the fact that it is not a classical old settlement area. Especially due to the exploitation of the Moravian Karst caves, the region has been permanently inhabited only rarely. To bring the theme closer, the exhibition uses replicas and reconstructions of objects, models, a video reconstruction of the creation of a Neolithic house or scientific paintings by Libor Balák and drawings by the Dvorskis. Visitors can thus compare the state of the objects and, through the replicas, see what the objects looked like when they were in use. The exhibition is guided by the comic character of Karel Pazourek, who introduces the topic mainly to children by comparing the discoveries of an archaeologist to detective work. The exhibition is accessible to wheelchair users and is also designed for blind visitors. It is possible to use an audio guide in the exhibition or play the game Geofun, which through augmented reality makes the exhibition accessible not only to visitors in wheelchairs who cannot get into all the corners, but will certainly entertain children as well. In the section devoted to the early Middle Ages, visitors can unlock and enter a model of a Slavic earthworks, rotate display cases and discover objects or theories depicting the events at Bull Rock. They can touch replicas of materials and tools from the Bronze Age workshop or the tools of the first Neolithic farmers. A cave crawl with a stop at the Magdalen hunters in the Bakery Cave will lead them to the mammoth tusks stored in the Shed Cave. The museum has a playroom with an archaeological sandbox and fun exploration of history through mysterious cabinets, visitors can try on costumes from different periods in front of a virtual mirror and play themed games on a touch screen or learn about the museum's activities. In the exhibition Journey to the prehistory of Blansko, visitors can also see the legendary and theoretical "princess" from the nearby cave Býčí skála. Her skeleton was discovered in the anteroom of the Bull Rock almost one hundred and fifty years ago by the father of Moravian archaeology and the founder of the Blansko museum tradition, Dr. Jindřich Wankel. The planned reconstruction of the figure, including clothing and jewellery, is based on previous studies of its possible form and current findings of archaeological research. It thus provides a new insight into what such a princess might have looked like. Wankel's unique discovery of a sixth-century BC cave sanctuary at Bull Rock included, in addition to a large number of luxury items, the skeletons of some 40 people, of whom only the skulls have survived to this day. While most of the skulls, like other finds from the great discovery of 1872, ended up in the collections of the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, one skull met a different fate. This was the skull of a woman, under which was discovered a cluster of four crumpled gold belt buckles that would have placed its wearer in the upper social class of the time. For many years the skull remained preserved in the Wankel and Absolon families, where it was traditionally nicknamed "the princess". We have no documentary evidence that Wankel himself called her that. The reasons that led him to keep the skull in his collection are unlikely to be known today, but we can only assume that he was attracted to it by a certain emotional, perhaps romantic relationship, which later made the skull part of the collections of the Anthropos Institute of the Moravian Museum. In addition to the skull of the princess, Wankel also kept an iron ring and a bear bone. Sculptor Ondřej Bílek used a reconstruction of the princess's face, which he created together with Eva Vaníčková from the Centre for Cultural Anthropology of the Anthropos Pavilion in Brno, to create the figure of the princess. Given the intention to incorporate into the new form of the princess a pair of golden hairpins, which were to be found under her skull, a different rendition of her hairstyle was chosen than in 2016. The height and proportions of the figure were determined according to the average at the time, based on available anthropological analyses. The body was created using a 3D scanning method to match the height of the female figure at this time in history," the sculptor added. The reconstruction of the hand-woven female garment and veil was created by Kristýna Urbanová on the basis of previously known textile fragments from the earlier Iron Age and contemporary iconographic sources. The entire fabric is woven on a reconstruction of a wooden loom with clay weights after dyeing the yarns. Such a procedure allows us to get as close as possible to the textiles that we have from the Hallstatt period preserved in archaeological contexts on our territory and in the region of Central Europe. The production time for such fabrics is in the order of weeks. Obsah Front page Images from Moravian Switzerland Museum of Blansko Region Moravian Karst Cave divers Henry Wankel Czechoslovak Lion History of the chateau Hugo Franz Old Count Salm Olomučany pottery Archeology Treasure of silver coins The Mystery of "Býčí Skálal" Cave Princess of "Býčí Skála" Cave Funeral carriage Blansko artistic cast iron Archeology Karl Ludwig von Reichenbach