Migration Period
between Odra and Vistula

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Łubiana

Łubiana, Kościerzyna district, Pomeranian Voivodeship, site of discovery in 1986 in the ploughsoil by Graniczna River of a bronze hoard. The objects rested in a bowl, type E 99/100, and were covered with 27 iron spearheads. The total weight of the hoard was 19 kg, that of bronze objects - 14 kg (fig. 1.). The deposit was submitted to the Archaeology Museum in Gdańsk. The largest group of bronzes were fragments of vessels and brooches from groups A II–VII. There were also some dress pins, needles and shield-grip fragments and a much smaller number of belt set elements and ornaments. Some of the youngest brooch forms were unfinished or failed specimens. This suggests that the deposit belonged to a bronze-smith and was his stock of raw material, for use in making new items. The earliest objects in the hoard date from late 1st c. BC, the latest - to the onset of 5th c. AD (→Migration Period  phase D1), with most items from the second half of the 2nd and early 3rd c. The sheer number of objects in the hoard suggests that they were taken from robbed graves, both inhumation and cremation (many items are partly melted and warped). The spearheads have a fire patina. The presence of spearheads in the hoard and the fact that they were used to cover its entire contents suggests that they were meant to protect the deposit from discovery by an unauthorized party.

Analysis of artefact forms, brooches in particular, revealed the presence of types distinctive for →Wielbark Culture  and →Przeworsk Culture , with a few from the West Balt →Balts  environment,  identifying the area of grave robbery (several large cemeteries at least) as northern Greater Poland, zone of direct contact of Wielbark and Przeworsk cultures. There were no brooch forms characteristic for the eastern Przeworsk Culture zone (i.e. Mazovia) which suggests this area was not penetrated.

The time of burial of the deposit is dated to 420/430, the period when the latest Wielbark Culture inventories disappear from the archaeological record in Pomerania. A similar, much smaller “founder’s hoard” is known from →Frombork , Braniewo district. 

MM

Literature: M. Mączyńska, Der frühvölkerwanderungszeitliche Hortfund aus Łubiana, Kreis Kościerzyna (Pommern), Bericht der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission 90, 2009 (2011), p. 7-482.