2,500-Year-Old Bronze Items and Bones Recovered in Poland

TORUŃ, POLAND—Science in Poland reports that a group of metal detectorists from the Kujawy-Pomerania History Seekers Group discovered a 2,500-year-old collection of bronze necklaces, bracelets, greaves, and pins in a plowed field that was once a lake in northern Poland and alerted the authorities. Researchers led by Wojciech Sosnowski of the Office of Conservator of Monuments of Toruń returned to the site, where they found three deposits that had not been disturbed by plowing, and pieces of fabric, rope, tools made of antler, bronze sheet fittings, and bronze horse harness fittings. Jacek Gackowski of Nicolaus Copernicus University examined the artifacts, and said that most of them can be associated with the local Lusatian culture, but some of them may have been made by the Scythians. “It was a time of growing unrest related to the penetration of groups of nomads coming from the Pontic Steppe, probably Scythians or the Neuri, into Central and Eastern Europe,” he said. Human bones found among the artifacts suggest that sacrifices may have been periodically made at the site. “They tried to secure their existence and give ritual resistance to the imminent, as it turned out, inevitable changes,” Gackowski concluded. To read about a cemetery of the Lusatian culture, go to "World Roundup: Poland."