Ornamented harpoon with one barb

The single-barb harpoon discovered in Police, the Police district, was made from the large beam of an adult, healthy male roe deer, hunted in late summer or autumn, as evidenced by the presence of the scapula and the remains of the skull. Judging by the size of the antlers, the individual was more prominent than modern roe deer. The harpoon is covered with ornamentation consisting of a series of diagonal incisions forming a grid in the middle part and transverse lines under the barb and at the base. Such ornamental motifs are characteristic of the art of hunter-gatherer communities in the northern part of Europe. The history of the harpoon from Police has been complicated and unclear since its discovery. Following the most reliable version, it was dug up from the bottom of the Oder River near Police during dredging in the summer of 1934. Initially, it was supposed to go to the Heimatmuseum in Świnoujście. The then director of that institution, Rector Burkhardt, transferred it to the museum collection in Szczecin. A note on the harpoon reception was made by Hans Jürgen Eggers. He enclosed a drawing of the harpoon with the description "Aus der ODER bei PÖLITZ, kr. Randow", but in the text, he consistently referred to Szczecin-Podjuchy as the place where it was found. At the end of the Second World War, the harpoon and other valuable items from the museum's collection were hidden outside Szczecin for fear of bombing. It was eventually taken to the Stralsund Museum, from where it was returned to Szczecin as part of a German-Polish exchange of artefacts in 2009-2010.

Michał Adamczyk