Type IV decorated vase (Wołagiewicz)

The presented vessel comes from a cremation burial that was accidentally discovered in 1971, near the railway station in Łobez. It is a vase of the Wielbark culture with a smoothed surface and narrowed handles, decorated on the body with cordons and densely engraved, vertical lines. All these features are typical for the pottery of the Wielbark culture, which occupied Pomerania between the 1st and the middle of the 5th century. This culture is distinguished by its bi-ritual cemeteries - they contained both cremations and inhumation burials. Their grave furnishings include, apart from pottery, only objects made of non-ferrous metals. They never buried any iron objects, even elements of weaponry. The Wielbark burial site discovered in Łobez contained as many as five bronze fibulae, which were originally used for fastening clothing, a buckle and strap-ends, a bronze key with fittings of a wooden casket, a bone comb, and a partially preserved necklace of glass beads with a special silver buckle for fastening it. All these objects indicate that the burial discovered in Łobes was of a woman belonging to the upper class of the society at that time.

Bartłomiej Rogalski