BURDAG, POLAND—Nearly 100 cremation burials have been discovered during excavations in Burdąg, Poland by archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Łódź, says a report in Science and Scholarship in Poland. In the graves the team found a surprising number of artifacts both of a more expected sort, such as pottery, as well as some rarer items including tinder and flint with the remains of the fabric they had been wrapped in, a Frankish glass vessel fragment, and several knives with their wooden handles preserved. Team leader Mirosław Rudnicki believes that only 10 percent of the necropolis has been excavated thus far and that the burial site was used by a large population during the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. "The local population probably functioned as part of a tribal structure, distinguished by wealth and extensive contacts. These contacts, evidence of which has also been discovered in Burdąg, included Scandinavian, Frankish, Slavic, and Avar areas,” says Rudnicki. To read about the middle ages in another part of eastern Europe, see ARCHAEOLOGY'S "Insight: Legacy of Medieval Serbia."
