Buttoned teapot

The reconstructed earthenware vessel, a small, undecorated bowl with a single button, was discovered during excavations in Rzepnowo (German Repenow), a settlement of the Linear Band Ware culture, the oldest agricultural community in West Pomerania. Excavations began there in February 1928, when ploughed pits with prehistoric pottery were observed in the Helmut Wendlandt's field located halfway between Rzepnów and the hamlet of Chwarsty (German: Karlsfelde). That was one of the first field activities of Rudolf Willnow, the head of the local tax office and deputy director of the Regional History Museum in Pyrzyce (Kreisheimatmuseum Pyritz) established in 1927. At the same time, he started to act as a custodian of archaeological monuments in the Pyrzyce region. The first of five farm pits was then excavated. Excavations were resumed in April 1930 under the supervision of Dr Otto Kunkel, Director of the Szczecin museum and Pomeranian archaeological monument restorer, to examine the remaining four cavities. The discovery and excavations at the Rzepnów settlement marked the beginning of research into the appearance of Neolithic communities in West Pomerania. The presence of settlements of early Neolithic communities on fertile soils of the Pyrzyce area, indicated in the archaeological literature at that time, caused this region (and several years later also a twin settlement cluster located on the Wkrzańskie Hills west of the Odra River) to be permanently included in the subject literature as a Lower Odra enclave of settlement of the people of the Linear Band Ware culture. In the light of current knowledge, it appears to be one of the latest settlements of this culture in the Lowland zone (at the end of the third quarter of the 6th millennium BC).

Krzysztof Kowalski