Witkowo

Witkowo, Słupsk district, Pomeranian Voivodeship (German Vietkow), site of discovery in 1904, during an amateur exploration of a hill (former name Lupinenberge) found about 750 m south-east of the village, of two earth-and-stone burial mounds and, reportedly, 300 urned graves. Information about these findings was recorded by Walter Witt, the district monuments curator. Some of the finds passed to the museum in Szczecin. At present only a glass beaker survives. In 1970 the site was investigated by Czesław Strzyżewski from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań but no further artefacts were recovered.

The two burial mounds each held an inhumation burial. One of them was male, resting in a box measuring 4 x 4 m, covered by five layers of stones up to 3 m high; the other – a female, rested in a box measuring 4 x 2.5 m. The grave goods surviving from the two burials could not be separated into individual assemblages and included the following: (a) glass beaker, type E 230 (type “Kowalki”), H. 9.4 cm, light green, manufactured in the Black Sea region; (b) bronze brooch with a closed catchplate with affinity to Gotland brooches from period VI: 2 of B. Nerman; (c) bronze oval brooch with a wide corrugated bow of a form encountered on the Middle Danube and the Eurasian steppe region; (d) iron shield-boss with a “cylindrical” spike; (e) 4 iron spearheads of different length, between 21.0 cm and 38.5 cm; (f) iron two-edged sword, L. 81 cm; iron two-edged sword surviving in fragments; (g) a fragment of an unidentified bronze object with some textile residue; (h) 24 glass and amber beads, one of them - type 198e (?), the remainder - type 438 of Tempelmann-Mączyńska; (i) 2 fragments of a pottery vessel. The graves and what survived of the grave goods, dated to the middle of the second half of the 5th century, have been linked to a small concentration of graves of a Scandinavian tradition recorded in the area lying between the Lower Łupawa and the Łeba rivers. See also: →Główczyce, →Głuszyno, Gorzyno.

HM

Literature: H. J. Eggers, Grabfunde der Völkerwanderungszeit aus Pommern, Baltische Studien, N. F., vol. 47, 1959, p. 13-28; J. Żak, Studia nad kontaktami handlowymi społeczeństw zachodniosłowiańskich ze skandynawskimi od VI do VIII w. n. e., 1962, Wrocław; K. Godłowski, Okres wędrówek ludów na Pomorzu, Pomorania Antiqua, vol. X, 1981, p. 65-129; H. Machajewski, Skandynawskie elementy kulturowe na Pomorzu Zachodnim z okresu wędrówek ludów (2 połowa IV w. – początek VI w.), Przegląd Archeologiczny, vol. 40, 1992, p. 71-96.

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  Fig. 1. Witkowo – brooch, beaker, buckle and a necklace of beads, from H.J. Eggers 1959, p. 14, Taf. 2B: 1-4.