Copy of type I crown necklace (Kostrzewski)

The crown-shaped bronze neck-ring is completely preserved with only some small damages. It owes its name to the distinctive decoration of the outer side in the form of a noticeable carving. In the case of the exhibited specimen, the indentations are regularly spaced every 0.4 cm. These neck-rings are a diverse group of ornaments from 4th-1st century BC, typical for the people of Jastorf culture, named after the archaeological site at Jastorf in Lower Saxony. The earliest known crown-shaped neck-rings come from the native areas of this culture - the Jutland Peninsula and northern Germany. They are not numerous in Pomerania, but their local varieties are known. On the map of Europe, the locations of crown necklaces are distributed in a narrow band running from the Jutland Peninsula, through Poland and Ukraine to the Balkans. Archaeologists have long pointed out that the migration route of the Germanic tribes of Skir and Bastarn, known from written sources, followed the same route. This concurrence is also one of the arguments to identify the communities of the Jastorf culture with the Proto-Germanic tribes. The presented neck-ring was found before 1914 during peat digging near Rydzewo in Drawsko poviat. No further information about the context of the discovery has survived. It is therefore unknown whether this was a deposit intentionally placed in an aquatic environment, a so-called aquatic offering, or a piece of furnishing in a destroyed grave. Originally, the neck-ring has been kept in the private collection of Horst Schmuck, a teacher from Rydzewo, who was a local collector and an amateur archaeologist. In 1930 he sold the necklace to the Szczecin museum for 25 marks.

Bartłomiej Rogalski