Decorated goblet

In September 1942, the archaeological collection of the Pomeranian State Museum (Pommersches Landesmuseum) in Szczecin received three decorated clay goblets of the Corded Ware culture found in the grounds of the village of Dołuje (German: Neuenkirchen). The objects, whose circumstances of discovery were unknown, or the information given by the donor, Mr Heinz Witt, was not preserved, were entered in the inventory, sketched and photographed, and in 1943 transported to a safe place together with more valuable museum objects. The dislocation of part of the collection was due to the increased threat of carpet raids on the urban centres of the Third Reich, initiated in March 1942 by the British Air Force bombing Lübeck. Increased efforts to secure the artefacts and documentation were then carried out in all major German museums. In the Pomeranian State Museum, the collections were systematically moved to the lower floors of the building and evacuated to pre-selected private properties and official buildings, where they remained in the care of trustworthy people, above all representatives of well-known Pomeranian families. Twenty-five hiding places for the collections and their documentation were designated, located in various regions of the then Pomeranian Province. The Dołuje goblets were taken to Sievertshagen in Vorpommern. After the end of the war the museum exhibits deposited there were placed in the Kulturhistorisches Museum in Stralsund. Due to the Polish-German exchange of archaeological artefacts from the former Szczecin collection, two of the Dołuje goblets were transferred to the National Museum in Szczecin. The third was lost in unknown circumstances. The present goblet, like the second of the preserved vessels, is decorated with strips of diagonal incisions all around, and may be associated with the middle stage of the Corded Ware community in Western Pomerania and the period around the 3rd quarter of the 3rd millennium BC.

Krzysztof Kowalski