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New dendrochronological and radiocarbon data change considerably our image of the historical context of the building of early medieval hillforts connected with the rise and the decline of the Great Moravian principality. Between 2005 and 2010, the University of Frankfurt am Main and the Archaeological Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences jointly carried out excavations, geomagnetic prospecting and archaeometric investigations in nine strongholds of western Slovakia. Probably the biggest hillfort of Central Europe (diameter 1.7 km/1.2 miles), Bíňa on the Gran River was formerly considered a military encampment of the Hungarian King Stephen I (around 1000 AD). It now turns out to have been built in the decades around 800 AD. Its historical background is still unclear. On the Nitra castle hill, a palisade enclosure probably dates to the time when the first known local ruler, Pribina, was expulsed from his seat by his enemy Mojmir I. (833 AD). Three medium large hillforts (Majcichov, Bojná and very probably Pobedim) of the type traditionally dated to the pre-Great Moravian period turned out in fact to belong to the very end of the Great Moravian period and to the process of that realm’s destruction by Hungarian raids around 900 AD. In Bratislava, the fortress of Brezalauspurc, described as the site in whose vicinity Bavaria and the Hungarians fought a disastrous battle in 907 AD, was rebuilt or in large part reconstructed by the Polish ruler Bolesław Chrobry around 1000 AD.