Archaeological research is expensive, its extent decided primarily by state authorities capable of financing its implementation. A good example is the Polish Millennial research which – regardless of the motivation of the academic community – was a project intended to lend legitimacy to communist rule in Poland, helping confirm Silesia’s/Pomerania’s “immemorial” affiliation to Poland and project the image of the authorities of People’s Poland as legitimate heirs of Bolesław the Brave. A peculiar situation prevailed in the eastern outlying region of People’s Poland which can hardly be regarded as a part of Early Piast Poland. Here the narrative strategy was hamstrung by the political domination of the Soviet Union, the memory of Polish-Ukrainian conflicts. After 1989, we have been witnessing a major upsurge of archaeological fieldwork in this part of Poland (Chełm/Czermno), but the issue of whether the region was the domain of the Piast or of the Rurikids has lost none of its relevance