Amber pendant

The pendant made of amber, discovered in 1958 during excavations in the Old Town in Kamień Pomorski has the shape of a flattened fish with a hole in the place of the tail. It is made of milky orange amber, carefully polished and smoothed. It was probably made in a local amber workshop. As a material, amber is very easy to work with, as it can be shaped with a knife and turned on lathes. Some pieces have visible machining marks, others are meticulously polished, like the fish-shaped pendant. Holes for hanging the piece were made with a bow drill. In Kamień, the circumstances for the establishment and development of handicraft production emerged rather early – in the early Middle Ages, at the beginning of the 9th century, Kamień by the Karpina Bay was a fortified town with a moat and a palisade, which developed various sectors of crafts, as evidenced by the archaeological findings. In time, a fortified settlement with a market and a network of open settlements were established around the burgh. Thanks to its convenient location, Kamień became a ducal seat in the first half of the 12th century, with two churches founded by Otto of Bamberg during his second Christianisation mission in 1128.

Ewa Górkiewicz-Bucka