A Collection Of Bronze Age Jewelry Was Found In Poland, And It Used To Be Part Of An Ancient Burial Ritual From Over 3,000 Years Ago
In Poland, archaeologists uncovered a collection of metal jewelry and several human remains from the Bronze Age at the bottom of a dry lake bed.
The jewelry pieces were once part of an ancient burial ritual and have provided valuable insight into the religious practices of the people who lived in the surrounding region over 3,000 years ago.
The dried-out lake bed where the artifacts were discovered is a site called Papowo Biskupie, which was occupied from roughly 1200 B.C. to 450 B.C. by the Chelmno group, a community that was part of the Lusatian culture.
The Lusatians lived in what is now Poland during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. They were known for creating ritual deposits of metal objects in bodies of water. Previously, it was believed that the Chelmno group did not engage in this practice.
“Traditionally, the Chelmno group people are thought to have been largely unaffected by the social and economic developments of the Urnfield period and the subsequent Hallstatt culture,” wrote the authors of the study.
“In contrast with the widespread metal-hoarding seen in more southerly Lusatian regions, metal does not appear to have featured prominently in the social and ritual activities of the Chelmno community.”
However, the new jewelry findings from the most recent excavation have upended that theory. The cache of metal jewelry included a variety of arm and neck ornaments, such as a multi-strand necklace with beads that encircled a pendant shaped like a swallowtail. In addition, there were also the remains of what could have been a woman’s outfit.
According to the researchers, a majority of the metal artifacts were created by local community members.
But some were made from materials that didn’t belong to the area, like the beads on the multi-strand necklace.
swen_stroop – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
“The bead is made of low-magnesium glass that was sourced from the Eastern Mediterranean region,” said Lukasz Kowalski, a researcher at the AGH University of Science and Technology of Krakow.
“This increases the use of evidence that power-elites of the Chelmno group became parties to a metal trading network that connected much of the European continent in the 1st millennium B.C.”
The metal jewelry was found alongside the bones of 33 individuals. After samples were analyzed using radiocarbon dating, the study revealed that the bones were buried in the lake before the hoard of metal was, suggesting that the Chelmno group experienced a shift in their ritual practices and belief system later on.
So, although the Chelmno group was different from the rest of Lusatian culture in many ways, it seemed that their religious customs ended up aligning at some point in time.
Overall, the discovery at Papowo Biskupie has the potential to offer a better understanding of the complexities of the use of metal depositions and human sacrifices within the Chelmno group.
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