The Myślibórz Gorge, located within the Kaczawy Foothills, is well-known to environmentalists and scholars studying the past. The investigations launched in the 1990s made it possible to determine the chronology of three of the archaeological sites in this area. In 2018, two hillforts – on the Kobylica and Golica hills – were investigated. Czech literature classifies such hillforts as the ostrožna-type. The excavations of these hillforts made it possible to establish to date them between the 9th and 10th centuries.The hillforts were located on hilltops with similar altitudes above the sea level, less than 200 m from each other. Such a spatial arrangement made it possible to control the gateway to the Myślibórz Gorge from the north-east. Reasons for developing a defensive system in the southern part of the gorge are obscure, as is the role that two other early medieval hillforts played in it. Was it simply a warning system, or rather part of a comprehensive network of defensive sites?
The initial classification of numismatic finds consists mainly in determining whether they were single finds, hoards or cumulative deposits. In the course of the last few decades the availability of metal detectors increased significantly, and more and more hoards are found by amateurs. In such situations, especially when hoards include coins, one must be very careful and all possibilities must be thoroughly considered. In such situations suitable research techniques must be employed in order to verify the genuineness of the artefacts, the coins and the containers in which they were deposited. The available research methods must be utilized to determine whether the size of the vessel matched the number of the coins recorded, if there were any coin traces inside of the vessels in which they had allegedly been deposited and if matching patina/corrosion traces occur both on the coins and in the vessels. This investigation was realized for the hoard of Prague groschen recorded in the vicinity of Wałbrzych (Lower Silesian province, Poland), which was accidentally found. For this purpose, the non-destructive methods were applied, including the infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction and fluorescence (XRD, XRF) and microscopic studies (OM).
Within the research of the most important early medieval centers in Polish territory, the study of the strongholds themselves and of their background is centrally important. In the case of Wrocław, such analyses have been undertaken several times, but in view of the enormous increase in the sources obtained in the course of wide-ranging rescue research, it worth taking a look at this problem again. The aim of this article is to capture the dynamics of settlement changes in the early Middle Ages in the area of today’s city of Wroclaw and its closest surroundings. In order for this study to be credible, all possible data was used (AZP – Archaeological Photo of Poland, available publications, materials collected in museums, unpublished reports from research) in order to recreate the image of the settlement of this period. The result is a new look at the development of settlement in the vicinity of a large center, like Wroclaw, and an attempt to capture the factors determining these transformations.
Finds of early medieval pendants, known as kaptorgas, are not common in Poland. For this reason, the kaptorga found in 1957 in Opole (Silesia), in southwest Poland, is all the more interesting. The artefact is housed in a museum, and on the occasion of its re-conservation, permission to conduct archaeometric studies was given. The kaptorga was subjected to analyses using nondestructive and minimally invasive techniques. Elemental tests with energy dispersive XRF and SEM-EDS spectrometers showed that the pendant is made of brass, not bronze sheet, as was originally thought. In its filling, there is a small fragment of plant-fiber thread (subjected to microscopic observations) and beeswax, which was identified using infrared spectroscopy and gas chromatography with a mass spectrometer.
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