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The Sacred Lake Challenge: preliminary findings from the Lusatian website of Papowo Biskupie, Poland | Antiquity

The Sacred Lake Challenge: preliminary findings from the Lusatian website of Papowo Biskupie, Poland | Antiquity

2024-01-28 22:52:15

Introduction

Throughout the interval 1200–450 BC, the Chełmno land in north-central Poland was residence to one of many northernmost communities of the Lusatian tradition—an archaeological tradition that shaped a part of the North European Bronze Age and continued by means of the Urnfield tradition into the Early Iron Age. Historically, the Chełmno group individuals are thought to have been largely unaffected by the social and financial developments of the Urnfield interval and the next Hallstatt tradition and, in distinction with the widespread metal-hoarding seen in Lusatian areas that gravitated in direction of the Nordic zone and Danubian-Alpine centre of the south, steel doesn’t seem to have featured prominently within the social and ritual actions of the Chełmno group (Gackowski Reference Gackowski2012). However this picture of disinterested steel motion and consumption within the area was challenged in early 2023 when steel detectorists of the Kujawsko-Pomorska Grupa Poszukiwaczy Historii situated steel deposits and stray finds in a dried-up lake within the village of Papowo Biskupie. Subsequent rescue excavations, performed by the Provincial Workplace for the Safety of Monuments in Toruń, recovered greater than 550 bronze artefacts, human bones and different archaeological materials, rendering the location at Papowo Biskupie one of the eloquent testimonies of formality exercise from the Lusatian interval in Poland.

Palaeoenvironmental setting and chronology

The archaeological website at Papowo Biskupie (Chełmno district, Kuyavian-Pomeranian province) is situated in a kettle gap—a crater shaped by retreating glaciers as buried ice melts and overlying sediment collapses in—with a most depth of 7m. It’s flanked by a moraine plateau overlooking fertile black earths and lessive soils, roughly 30km north of Toruń (Figure 1A). Till the second half of the eighteenth century AD, the kettle gap was crammed by an unnamed lake that coated an space of roughly 30ha. The lake was drained within the nineteenth century and once more within the Nineteen Eighties for agricultural use. It’s now dry land utilised as an agricultural space.

Determine 1. Topography of the location at Papowo Biskupie, with reconstruction of the dried-up lake (A) and in situ views of the steel deposits (D–F). Draining of the lake within the late nineteenth century AD additionally revealed a steel hoard (C) (Semrau Reference Semrau1917). The realm over which human bones have been recovered is indicated by the hatched strains. Radiocarbon dates (B) have been calibrated in OxCal v4.4.2 (Bronk Ramsey Reference Bronk Ramsey2009), utilizing the IntCal20 calibration curve (Reimer et al. Reference Reimer2020) (website plan by P. Molewski and M. Sosnowski; Digital Terrain Mannequin information courtesy of Główny Urząd Geodezji i Kartografii).

A take a look at trench and drilling core have been opened close to the placement of the steel deposits to examine the palaeoenvironmental circumstances of the location. Vertical stratigraphy consists of colluvial sediments deposited on natural soil composed of peat and gyttja, indicating periodic waterlogging of eutrophic fen mire (Figure 2B). The pollen file between 0.26 and 0.31m depth (Figure 2A) correlates with the Lusatian interval and divulges a rise in wetland vegetation. The presence of preserved leaves from nenuphar (Nuphar/Nymphea) and bulrushes (Typha latifolia) means that the artefacts have been deposited throughout the seasonal waterlogging of the fen. Furthermore, plant macrofossils from the steel deposition context recommend that the bronze choices have been packed into baskets fabricated from birch bark (Figure 2C & D) and lined with moss (Drepanocladus and/or Cratoneurum; Figure 2EH).

Determine 2. Vertical stratification of the take a look at trench (B) and pollen diagram from a drilling core taken close to the placement of the steel deposits (A). Taxonomical identifications for the plant macrofossils (C–D) are within the textual content (images by D. Kamiński and A. Podgórski; A by A.M. Noryśkiewicz; B by M. Jankowski).

Radiocarbon relationship on human bones (Figure 1B) returned an age vary of 1040–780 cal BC at 95.4%, chance roughly corresponding with the Montelius IV and V durations of the Northern Bronze Age. An antler artefact accompanying one of many steel deposits (Figure 1F) dates to 760–410 cal BC at 95.4% chance and will sign a temporal distinction between depositional occasions involving human corpses and steel. The timing of steel deposition could also be additional refined to 600–500 BC because of the presence of nail-like earrings within the assemblage.

Archaeological finds and their significance

Over 550 bronze artefacts have been recovered from the location, comprising primarily arm and neck ornaments and different female-gendered objects, in addition to horse gear and steel waste (Figure 3). Distinguished among the many finds is a multi-turn necklace (Figure 4) composed of oval-shaped and tubular beads interspersed with a number of swallow-tail pendants and a single glass bead (Ringaugenperle). The bead is fabricated from low-magnesium glass that may be traced from its supply within the Jap Mediterranean, by means of workshops in present-day Italy, Slovenia and Croatia, and alongside the buying and selling route operating by means of japanese Germany throughout the Hallstatt D interval spanning 600–450 BC (Purowski et al. Reference Purowski, Syta and Wagner2020). The necklace was present in affiliation with 4 giant steel pins and different jewelry which will have shaped a part of a feminine outfit (Figure 5). Nail-like earrings (Figure 3A), in all probability originating from western Ukraine, have been additionally recovered. Distant sensing has revealed dozens of extra non-ferrous alerts, permitting anticipation of additional metalwork deposited on the website. Different finds embrace a flint spearhead and antler artefacts, one among which was mounted in an iron socket and adorned with leaded bronze inlays (Figure 6), including to the physique of proof that cervids have been ideologically vital to the Lusatian individuals.

Determine 3. Bronze metalwork deposited at Papowo Biskupie (images by A. Piasecka).

Determine 4. Hypothetical reconstruction of the necklace recovered from Papowo Biskupie (A & B). Swallow-tail pendants (E) that have been a part of the necklace are paralleled by finds from Pomerania and Brandenburg (C). D reveals the magnesium and potassium content material of the bead compared to different glass beads present in Poland (images by A. Fisz; D tailored from Sprockhoff Reference Sprockhoff1956; E by T. Purowski).

Determine 5. Hypothetical reconstruction of a feminine outfit primarily based on steel costume fittings and jewelry deposited at Papowo Biskupie ({photograph} by A. Fisz).

See Also

Determine 6. Artefacts and human bones accompanying the metalwork deposited at Papowo Biskupie (A, B & H). No particular age-at-death class dominated the human assemblage (G). Traceology revealed bronze inlays (E–F) on the base of an antler artefact (B), which additionally shows a mix of technological marks and subsequent hand-held use-wear (C–D) (images by W. Lorkiewicz, W. Ochotny and G. Osipowicz; G by W. Lorkiewicz).

The positioning at Papowo Biskupie is phenomenal in yielding the skeletal stays of at the least 33 human people, together with infants, youngsters, adolescents and adults (however not these over 50 years previous) of each sexes. The bones have a lavatory patina and are severely fragmented however don’t have any direct proof of perimortem blunt or sharp power trauma (Figure 6GH). Though the bones have been disarticulated, the stratigraphic and geohistorical context of the location and comparability to mortuary remedy from the broader area present proof for linking the human stays with sacrificial practices. Apart from just a few potsherds, no different accompanying artefacts have been discovered with the human bones. There may be additionally nothing within the archaeological file of the area to recommend that human lavatory sacrifice continued into the Early Iron Age and the location at Papowo Biskupie might thus mirror a shift from human sacrifice to steel choices within the native wetland panorama throughout the cultural conversion of the Lusatian energy elites to Hallstatt tradition (cf. Kossack Reference Kossack1999). The results of this improvement are seen within the contents of the steel deposits on the website—the feminine ornaments accompanied by horse-related equipment belong to a wider sample of Hallstatt finds, which are sometimes taken as proof that ladies have been an vital medium in votive depositions (Kristiansen Reference Kristiansen1998).

To sum up, Papowo Biskupie opens a brand new window for exploring the social and ritual practices of the Lusatian period in Poland and demonstrates the potential of this place to supply a greater understanding of the complicated interaction between votive depositions and human sacrifice.

Funding assertion

This work was supported by the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Centrum Dziedzictwa w Toruniu and the Nationwide Science Centre, Poland, underneath grant settlement no. 2022/45/N/HS3/04212.

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