Decorated goblet

The glass vessel (beaker) with thick walls, is light green and decorated with polished ovals, arranged in a system of four stripes running around the vessel, and two lines engraved under the edge of the rim. The glass is transparent. It belongs to a group of glass vessels with a characteristic form and equally typical ornamentation, known in the literature as “Kowalki type” vessels. The name comes from another location in Western Pomerania. In the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin there is another identical glass beaker from the cemetery in Borkowice, Koszalin poviat. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish one from the other, which really shows how highly specialized Roman glass workshops were. Glass vessels, next to those made of bronze, are the most common objects of Roman origin found in Pomerania. They are usually small bowls and beakers. The degree of transparency indicates the quality of the vessel and the class of the maker. Cups with oval patterns, the so-called olives, were polished on the wall in a way typical for this type of vessels. They were produced in the workshops on the Black Sea coast. The beaker comes from a woman’s inhumation grave under a barrow, discovered in Witkowo, in Słupsk poviat. Apart from the beaker, a number of various objects were found in this burial: a clay vessel, a bronze fibula with a folded foot, a bronze belt buckle with a notched bow, an umbo (a centre fitting) for a shield, javelin arrowheads, a two-edged sword, fragments of bronze with the remains of a fabric, amber beads and beads made of enamel. The site in Witków was discovered in 1904 and two barrows were amateurishly excavated. The archival sources also mention about 200-300 urned cremations from the same town, but in the light of the existing knowledge about the Dębczyno group, it seems rather unbelievable.

Bartłomiej Rogalski