Frombork

Frombork (German Frauenburg), Braniewo district, Warmińsko-Mazurskie Voivodeship, a deposit of bronzes, beads and coins, discovered in 1911 in a gravel mine during the construction of a road linking F. and Bogdany (German Sonnenberg), in Ermeland of a dozen-odd bronze brooches (some fragmented) with traces of repair, or unfinished, 8 buckles, a wire ring, 2 cast bronze rings, bronze bars and fragments of sheet bronze, a fragmented bronze object as well as 2 beads of blue glass and one of jasper (fig. 1.). The undetermined fragmented bronze object presumably was part of a tool, its function now hard to identify. Other items in the deposit included scrap bronze and 32 Roman coins: 27 denarii (Titus to Commodus), 3 of them, similarly as the bronze tool fragment, went missing after the discovery, 4 bronze coins and a solidus →Solidus of  Theodosius II from 430-440. Also found in the hoard were crossbow brooches, types Schönwarling/Skowarcz and Dollkeim/Kovrovo, widespread on Balt territory and in Scandinavia, datable to the early phase of the Migration Period (C₃-D). The deposit was former stored in F. as a part of Schausammlung des Domkapitels and was probably lost during the second world war.

The deposit from F. is interpreted, based on the presence of unfinished brooches and scrap bronze, as a founder’s hoard formed in a Germanic →Germanic Tribes  environment; this is because the first Balt →Balts  settlers appear in the area only during the later phase of the →Migration Period . Analogies: →Łubiana , →Młoteczno , Radostowo, →Gudme  (Funen), Szilágysomlyó/→Şimleul-Silvaniei (Transylvania).

AZ

Literature: F. E. Peiser, H. Kemke, Der Depotfund von Frauenburg, Prussia, vol. 23 (1914-1919), p. 58-79; K. Godłowski, Fromborski skarb z okresu wędrówek ludów, Komentarze Fromborskie 4, 1972, p. 57-69; R. Ciołek, Die Fundmünzen der römischen Zeit in Polen: Pommern, Wetteren-Warszawa 2007; M. Mączyńska, Światło z popiołu. Wędrwówki ludów w Europie w IV i V w., Warszawa 2013, p. 267.

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  Fig. 1. F. E. Peiser, H. Kemke, Der Depotfund von Frauenburg, Prussia, vol. 23 (1914-1919), Plate 1.