Decorated goblet

The reconstructed clay vessel - a goblet on a hollow leg with nodules at the rim, decorated with a bar-and-tuft ornamentation made with a two-toothed tool, originally inlaid with white lime paste - comes from the equipment of a grave accidentally discovered in Karsko (German: Schöningsburg) in the autumn of 1884 by workers digging furrows on an elevation by the northern edge of the basin of Lake Płoń. According to the description of Major Berghaus from Stargard in November 1884, at a depth of about 25 cm they found the skeletal remains of a man "in the prime of life", arranged on an east-west axis, with the skull on the eastern side. Next to the burial there were objects which were part of his equipment: - near the skull the remains of earthenware, - near the legs a stone axe, three pieces of flint and a pair of boar tusks, - an ornament from a Spondylus shell, which was not mentioned by Berghaus. Part of the equipment discovered in the grave was donated to the collection of Pomeranian antiquities collected by the Society for History and Antiquities of Pomerania (Gesellschaft für Pommersche Geschichte und Altertumskunde) in Szczecin by Hermann Richard von Schöning, the then owner of the estate in Karsk. Other finds, i.e. the best-preserved clay vessel, two flint products, a stone axe and boar tusks, were added to his private collection kept in the Żukowo Palace. The objects donated in 1884 included fragments of the presented vessel. The goblet on an empty leg, due to an erroneous reconstruction, for many years was considered two vessels in the form of bowls. It was not until the 1930s that the mistake was corrected. The find from Karsk is the oldest set of grave furnishings preserved in the Szczecin collection. The forms of vessels and their ornamentation allow relating this discovery to the younger groups with the Corded Ware Culture from the Danube circle and approximately to the 1st half of the 5th millennium BC.

Krzysztof Kowalski