The paper presents Lusatian culture bronze artefacts recovered in the Orava region in northern Slovakia, which allows for tracing connections with the territory of present-day Poland in the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. The object is to discuss the provenance of the Lusatian bronze artefacts and analyse possible intercultural contacts with the north, across the Carpathians.

The aim of this paper is to present a multidisciplinary project dealing with analysis of young crustal movements in the Orava Basin, Polish Western Carpathians, on the basis of a three year long gravimetric, geodetic, geological and morphostructural study. The problem consists in quantitative interpretation of the obtained gravimetric results, i.e. in combining temporal gravity changes with those of geodynamic crustal processes. Gravity surveys conducted in 2004 and 2005 show a decrease in gravity values at benchmarks situated in the Central Carpathian Palaeogene Basin and Magura Nappe, while the central potion of the Orava Basin reveals the opposite trend. Such changes, if confirmed by successive measurement campaigns, appear to indicate recent uplift of the basin margins and subsidence of the basin itself.

The Carpathian Orava Basin is a tectonic structure filled with Neogene and Quaternary deposits superimposed on the collision zone between the ALCAPA and European plates. Tectonic features of the south-eastern margin of the Orava Basin and the adjoining part of the fore-arc Central Carpathian Palaeogene Basin were studied. Field observations of mesoscopic structures, analyses of digital elevation models and geological maps, supplemented with electrical resistivity tomography surveys were performed. Particular attention was paid to joint network analysis. The NE-SW-trending Krowiarki and Hruštinka-Biela Orava sinistral fault zones were recognized as key tectonic features that influenced the Orava Basin development. They constitute the north-eastern part of a larger Mur-Mürz-Žilina fault system that separates the Western Carpathians from the Eastern Alps. The interaction of these sinistral fault zones with the older tectonic structures of the collision zone caused the initiation and further development of the Orava Basin as a strike-slip-related basin. The Krowiarki Fault Zone subdivides areas with a different deformation pattern within the sediments of the Central Carpathian Palaeogene Basin and was active at least from the time of cessation of its sedimentation in the early Miocene. Comparison of structural data with the recent tectonic stress field, earthquake focal mechanisms and GPS measurements allows us to conclude that the Krowiarki Fault Zone shows a stable general pattern of tectonic activity for more than the last 20 myr and is presently still active.