Metal – Boarder – Ritual. Hoards in Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Landscape (original) (raw)
Related papers
T. Galewski, K. Ślusarska, Regional differences in V Bronze Age hoards from East Pomerania.
The 11th Nordic Bronze Age Symposium. The Changing Bronze Age in Fennoscandia and around the Baltic Sea, Helsinki, Finland 29.-31.10.2009
The hoard deposition phenomenon can’t be explained only by typological analysis. It should be studied on microregional level, or even singular case (see Mogielnicka – Urban 1997). Presented paper shows only a tip of the iceberg. Hoards should be treated as a integral part of Bronze and Iron Age culture. There are no simple and universal rule that explains the problem of metal objects accumulation (Krajewski 2007: 39). Furthermore arguments for interpreting hoard deposition as a manifestation of interregional cult (Blažek, Hansen 1997), the way of building up prestige of local elites (Ostoja-Zagórski 1992), socio-religious rites or offerings for deities (Blajer 1992, 2001: 288) seems to be insufficient. The explanation can be also more mundane – like a fixed toll/duty for travelling through foreign lands (see Kmieciński, Gurba 2006: 20). There are no unambiguous answers for the question of deposition purposes. New questions that arise in course of studying the problem make us return to discussion over hoards and its role in past societies. Maybe the key to find an answer lies in treating hoards deposition like a social phenomenon (Blajer 1999) and so we should search fixed and variables features in it?
A Hoard from Grabionna. New Information to Metalwork Production and Use in the Baltic Region
Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt, 2024
In 2016, a metal hoard was unearthed during agrarian works in the village of Grabionna in north-western Poland. The hoard consists of over 100 bronze and iron artefacts dating back to the Early Iron Age, including body ornaments, a weapon, tools, horse gear items and other metal objects, which were wrapped in textile packing that had decayed, and represents an important archaeological heritage of the region. This paper presents and discusses the results of archaeological, metallographic and chemical investigations of the bronze and iron artefacts, aided by evidence of conservation issues and textile imprints on the metalwork, in order to add more details to the biography of the Grabionna hoard and to broaden our knowledge of the metallurgical activities and metal hoarding during the Early Iron Age in the Baltic region.
Beyond Urnfields. New Perspectives on Late Bronze Age – Early Iron Age Funerary Practices in Northwest Europe (H. Agerskov Rose, L. Christensen & A. Louwen eds.), 2023
The traditionally perceived vision of the Late Bronze Age in Pomerania (northern Poland) emphasised the affinity of this region to other lands occupied by the Lusatian culture, an entity understood then as a self-conscious macrostructure. There was, for example, an attempt to downplay differences in the forms of material culture, such as bronze items. This had an unambiguous historical and political dimension (e.g. similarities to the Nordic Bronze Age were considered in such categories). More recent studies on socio-economic relations in Pomerania at the turn of the Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age indicate that the differences of the region in relation to the lowland areas of Greater Poland or Silesia went far beyond a greater or lesser affinity between the forms of material culture. Pomeranian communities differed from typical agrarian Lusatian (Urnfield) groups primarily in their more extensive and mobile type of economy and a model of social organisation that was adapted to it. Specific burial rites or ways of manifesting status, visible in hoarding rituals, were just a derivative of these differences. The coastal location of the region played a key role, favouring the maintenance of a network of contacts facing west and north, but not south, as in the case of the interior communities. Moreover, it allowed access to a unique local raw material: amber. The ‘rediscovery’ of this resource in the Late Bronze Age and the resulting supra-regional consequences helped to reinforce the uniqueness of the communities along the Baltic coasts in the Urnfield world.
Die frühe Eisenzeit in Mitteleuropa / Early Iron Age in Central Europe. Internationale Tagung vom 20.-22. Juli 2017 in Nürnberg, 2019
The custom of metal objects depositing in the form of hoards is characteristic of the Bronze Age. Along with its end it disappears, amongst others, in the zone associated with the Hallstatt circle. However, in some regions of Europe, hoards were still deposited in the ground and water. An example would be Pomerania and Greater Poland, where hoards of metal objects were deposited until the end of the Hallstatt D period. The disappearance of this custom had no connection with rapid changes in other spheres of culture. The processes taking place during this period were rather evolutionary in nature, despite the fact that this turning point is very clear. Hoards are interpreted in many ways. The disappearance of custom of their deposition as well. To date in archaeology attention was paid to the dissemination of new, commonly occurring raw material, which was iron. It was also emphasized changes in the social sphere related to manifesting position by rich grave gods. Recent research on the relationship between the hoards deposition places and local settlement networks and cultural landscape, allowed to propose an entirely new manner of interpreting the practice of metal objects deposition in the ground or water. Thus, it was possible to propose a new model of the process of this custom’s disappearance. It is based on transformations taking place in the ways of use of inhabited areas and the relationship between the communities living in this zone in the early Iron Age.
Chasing Bronze Age rainbows Studies on hoards and related phenomena in prehistoric Europe in honour of Wojciech Blajer , 2020
Thousands of Bronze Age hoards have been discovered all around Europe, showing a high variability in space and time. A visible differentiation in the content of the hoards expresses probably different depositaries and may provide some clues about the distribution of wealth – in this case bronze objects – within the society. Statistics, spatial analysis and ethnological examples provide facts that allow us to interpret this phenomenon in social and eventually economic terms.
In Polish archaeology - though not only - in past decades hoards were treated as assemblages of precious artefacts taken out of their cultural context and consequently their Investigation was focused on the typology of particular relics. One particularly Important challenge therefore is the formulation of an appropriate methodology, which on the one hand would make use of the research potential of contemporary archaeology and on the other, place these enigmatic finds in the appropriate social context. This is of particular significance in the view of the rapid growth in numbers of such finds, as has been the case in recent years. Dated to the end of the Bronze Age (ca. 950-800/750 BC), the hoard from Lubnowy Wielkie, is an example of a find indeed subjected to such a multi-aspectual methodology. Apart from typical archaeological analysis for the purposes of a fuller understanding of the documented find, research was also undertaken in archaeometallurgy by means of microscopic analysis, investigation of the chemical composition of alloys (ED-XRF and SEM-EDS) and computer tomography (research in part conducted in association with the E-RIHS.PL consortium). The above mentioned assemblage is composed of embellishments featuring a very coherent style. In all, there are four objects that could have been worn by the one and the same person. The analyses conducted had the aim of verifying hypotheses occurring in archaeological works, ones contending such an assemblage could have been the property of one person and that it was created at the same time in respect to an important life event such as a rite of passage. Further research questions concern the technology of making the ornaments. The research methodology was chosen in respect to the archaeological specificity of this hoard in particular, in the context of frequent interpretative propositions.
Viking Age silver hoards in the Baltic Zone. Deposition and (non)retrieval
The presentation was given at the Medieval Archaeology Seminar at the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford on 25 January 2016. In this talk I present some of the preliminary results of research of the archaeological contexts of Viking Age silver hoards in Northern and Central Europe. I am undertaking this for a DPhil thesis now in progress. The text presents the emerging method of determining the possible reasons for deposition and non-retrieval of hoards using the information on a presence or absence of a container cross-referenced with the weight of silver, supplemented by the archaeological and soil chemistry data, and by written sources. The discussion is based on regional case-studies of three of the biggest hoard concentrations in the Baltic Zone, Gotland, Pomerania and Svealand.
Contextualisation of the Early Iron Age hoard of bronze objects discovered in Gdynia-Karwiny, site 1
Recherches Archéologiques Nouvelle Serie, 2019
After the amateur discovery of a hoard of bronze ornaments (a kidney bracelet and two hollow ankle rings) in 2014 in a forest near Gdynia (Pomerania, northern Poland), the place was subjected to excavation. It turned out that in the nearest context of the bronzes (which had been found arranged one on top of the other in a narrow pit reaching 60 cm in depth) there was a cluster of stones, some of which could have been arranged intentionally in order to mark the place of the deposit. Next to this alleged stone circle there was a deep hearth used to heat stones, and for burning amber as incense. Remains of amber were preserved in the form of lumps and probably also as a deposit on the walls of some vessels. Some of the features of the examined complex may indicate a non-profane nature of the deposit: the presence of the stone structure, traces of burning amber, the location of the deposition spot in a not very habitable flattening of a narrow valley, as well as the chemical composition of the alloy of metals themselves. The ornaments were made of a porous copper alloy with a high addition of lead, antimony and arsenic, which could promote their fragility and poor use value. However, the ceramics found near the place where the bronzes are deposited do not differ from the settlement pottery of the time. The hoard and its context should be dated to the transition phase between the periods HaC1 and HaC2 (the turn of the 8th and 7th cent. BC). The Gdynia-Karwiny deposit adds to the list of finds from a period marked by the most frequent occurrence of hoards in Pomerania (turn of the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age). Its research seems to contribute to the interpretation of the deposition of metal objects as a phenomenon primarily of a ritual nature, and at the same time a social behaviour: a manifestation of competition for prestige.