A dagger blade with semicircular end, the Mierczyce variant

From the whole dagger, only a tiny triangular bronze head, ending with three rivet holes that served to fix the handle, possibly made of some organic material, such as antler, survived until today. It belongs to scarce finds, known in Poland from only one hoard and several grave finds. Together with a slender axe and a small spiral made of gold, the dagger constituted the equipment of a grave with a skeletal burial, located in a stone chest, which was discovered by accident on 4 May 1933 at the edge of a sand spit. Shortly after its discovery, the find was taken to the museum in Trzebiatów. Shortly afterwards, it was transferred to the Pommersches Landesmuseum in Stettin (Polish: Pomorskie Muzeum Krajowe w Szczecinie; English: Pomeranian State Museum in Szczecin), where it remained until 1944 when the collection was evacuated from Szczecin threatened by Allied air raids. The hatchet, dagger, and spiral and many others were transported deep into Germany due to the Polish-German exchange of old archaeological artefacts. The skeletal grave from Śliwin, dated to the 2nd half of the 1st to the beginning of the 2nd Bronze Age (approx. 1700-1500 BC), is a unique archaeological site in West Pomerania, containing bronze and gold objects. Research on the beginnings of the Bronze Age in the Pomeranian zone is based mainly on the so-called loose finds (without the known context of discovery), hoards of bronze objects, and a few graves, often poorly documented.

Dorota Kozłowska