Flask vessel, group F vessel (A. v. Müller)

The clay vessel was discovered in Stargard during a house construction by the contemporary street Młyńska 12, in the 1920s. The cemetery with cremation graves and one inhumation grave was discovered, furnished with clay vessels, fibulae, and bronze pins. The presented vessel with a narrow mouth was found in one of the devastated cremation graves. It features a flask-like form and a tall, cylindrical neck. The surface is burnished, of a dark-brown colour. Its body is two-conical, decorated with a toothed-wheel technique, and on the lower part with vertical lines. Two plastic cordons run around the neck’s base. The typological classification corresponds to pottery forms distinctive to the Elbe region and the so-called Gustow group in the Lower Oder region. It should be dated to the 1st/2nd century. The cultural identification of the vessel poses an issue. It represents a flask-like form, typical for areas in the vicinity of the Oder basin of the Western Pomerania region (inhabited by the population of the Gustow group). However, the area where the toothed-wheel decoration technique was used covers the regions from the Lower Elbe to the Rega valley on the east. Recently, some experts negated the idea of the presence of the Gustow group so far away, claiming that the western peripheries belonged to the other cultural unit, the so-called Wielbark culture, and the Gustow group pottery differences occur solely because of the Elbe region’s influence.

Monika Witek