A necklace

The neck-ring found in 1900 in the town of Czarnówko came from a hoard of bronze objects, found in peat during trenching. The deposit also contained a neck-collar, two sickles, a pendant, and two spiral anklets. The presented neck-ring was made from a thick, round bar with its ends bent outwards. It is decorated with diagonal lines, triangles and curves and dated to the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1300–1200 BC).

In the areas associated with the Nordic Bronze Age (the southern Scandinavia, Denmark and northern Germany), the outfit and related accessories included neck-rings, anklets, bracelets, fibulae, belt ornaments and tutuli (conical decorative elements). The findings from inhumation graves from the Late Bronze Age in Scandinavia provide the information on how these ornaments were worn. In the Early Bronze Age, the cremation burials were more common, and the larger decorations were discovered only in the hoards found in the fields or swamps. However, thanks to such useful methods as use-wear analysis, which examines the signs of use, such as wear and damage of the ornaments, or traces of repairs, it is possible to establish how the individual items were originally worn. With this type of research, it has been speculated that some bronze ornaments could have been worn under clothing, as indicated by the specific marks on their surface.

Monika Witek