International Summer School ‘Wolin/Jómsborg: a meeting point of Slavs and Scandinavians in the Middle Ages.’

The International Summer School ‘Wolin/Jómsborg: a meeting point of Slavs and Scandinavians in the Middle Ages’ will be held from 16th July to 30 July 2023 in Wolin, Poland, at the Andrzej Kaube Regional Museum, the Centre for Medieval Archaeology of the Baltic Region, and the Slavs and Vikings’ Centre.

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Living conditions in the Main City in Gdansk in the Late Middle Ages

Living conditions in the Late Medieval and Modern Period Main City in Gdańsk can be reconstructed by studying its material culture. For this reason, archaeologists from the University of Warsaw will analyse and publish results of archaeological and architectural investigation conducted in Powroźnicza Street. So far it has been one of the biggest explored areas, and it is situated almost in the centre of the old town.

Poziom użytkowy z drugiej połowy XIV wieku na zapleczu parceli Długi Targ 21 © K. Czajkowski, na licencji CC-BY-SA 4.0
Level used in the second half of the 14th century at the back of the property in no. 21 Długi Targ Street
© K. Czajkowski, CC-BY-SA 4.0 licence0

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The origin of Late Neolithic amber ornaments in Poland

The area of the south-eastern shores of the Baltic Sea was in prehistory and is still today an area abundant in deposits of raw amber, as indicated, among other things, by the numerous Late Neolithic (3rd millennium BC) amber workshops and amber ornaments found on archaeological sites located in the Vistula Fens, south of the Gulf of Gdańsk. Therefore, it is puzzling that relatively few finished amber ornaments come from both these areas and the nearby region of north-eastern Poland. Among the few contemporary known ornaments are those from sites: Ząbie 10, Supraśl 3 and Supraśl 6, which are unique in this part of the prehistoric world. The selected artifacts were thus subjected to stylistic and technological analysis in order to determine where they were made, also taking into account the type of raw material used. The research showed that although the amber ornaments were most likely produced from material extracted in the south-eastern Baltic coastal zone (succinite, gedanite and gedano-succinite), they have no direct analogues there. 

Uszkodzone i niedokończone na różnych etapach obróbki wytwory bursztynowe pochodzące z warsztatów bursztyniarskich w okolicach wsi Niedźwiedziówka © K. Kwiatkowska, na licencji CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Damaged and unfinished amber artefacts at various stages of processing from amber workshops near the Niedźwiedziówka village
© K. Kwiatkowska, on licence CC BY-ND 4.0

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The dawn of the Polish state

The circumstances surrounding the birth of the Polish state have been a source of fascination for a long time. Currently there are a number of research projects, conferences and individual studies that are looking at this issue in an interdisciplinary way. However, there are still many questions.

The book The Dawn of the Polish State, both to professionals and to the wider audience, shows a colourful picture of the past from a thousand years ago, but also illustrates the contribution of archaeology to the exploration of the roots of the state, Poland and Poles.

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Migration in Europe at the turn of Antiquity and the Middle Ages

An international team led by Prof. Aleksander Bursche has recently finished compiling the course and processes of migration in Central Europe at the end of Antiquity in a monographic form. The two-volume publication is the result of a six-year Maestro NCN project, during which archaeologists, anthropologists, historians and palaeobotanists studied cultural, ethnic, social, demographic and ecological relations from the late 4th to the late 6th centuries. It resulted in the re-evaluation of written sources, archives, archaeological and palynological materials.  A number of excavations were also carried out during the course of the project, as well as numerous anthropological, geophysical and palaeobotanical analyses of the sediments and pollen collected.

Monografia Migrations in Europe on the turn of the Antiquity and Middle Ages © P. Deska, A. Zapolska
Monograph Migrations in Europe on the turn of the Antiquity and Middle Ages
© P. Deska, A. Zapolska

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