Decorated goblet

The gently profiled earthenware goblet decorated with cord impressions and punctures found its way into the museum collection in 1918, at a time when they were on display and stored in the Szczecin City Museum (Museum der Stadt Stettin) opened in 1913. It was donated by Second Lieutenant Kruze, who could say little about the circumstances of discovering the relic, except that it had been found many years ago in Nowe Warpno (German; Nauwarp). The donor received the vessel from Miss Hinzte; she inherited it from her brother, who collected such objects in New Warpno. The publication on acquisitions to the collection for 1918 provided additional information that the goblet was found in the sand. Dr Emil Walter (1851-1926), Professor at St Mary's Gymnasium in Szczecin and a long-standing member of the Society for History and Antiquities of Pomerania, who researched prehistory and prepared annual summaries of the results of research and archaeological discoveries in Pomerania, mentioned two finds of cups of the Corded Ware culture revealed in 1918. The second one came from the village of Trzechel. The fact that both localities are situated in a natural region stretching on both sides of the lower Odra, whose flat surface, covered with sands and gravels, river muds, silts and peats, is occupied to a large extent by forest complexes of the Wkrzańska Forest in the west and the Goleniowska Forest in the east. In the scale of Pomerania, these areas belong to the most intensely used for settlement by communities from the circle of cultures with Corded Ware cultures, which lived in the Lower Odra region in the 3rd millennium BC. In the light of the discoveries made so far, the western part of this area - the Wkrzańska Plain - was inhabited already in the oldest phase of the existence of the people of the Corded Ware culture in Pomerania (the so-called all-European horizon). It is from there that vessels referring to the oldest forms of corded cups originate, to which also the find from Nowe Warpno belongs.

Krzysztof Kowalski