Stone axe

The stone axe from Mścięcino (German: Messenthin) found its way to the collection of Pomeranian antiquities collected in Szczecin by the Society for History and Antiquities of Pomeranian (Gesellschaft für Pommersche Geschichte und Altertumskunde) in 1912, together with other archaeological finds from a private collection, which had been gathered from the 1880s by the sanitary councillor Hugo Schumann (1853-1909). After his death, the district authorities bought the entire collection from his family and transferred it to the Society's collection. Hugo Schumann, who had practised medicine in Löcknitz since 1878, was an expert on prehistoric monuments, a member and collaborator of scientific societies in Szczecin and Berlin, and the local historical context Society. He pursued his scientific passion not only by collecting findings and information on fortified settlements, graves and ancient settlements in the area of the Wkrzańska Marchia (German: Uckermark) but also through several publications prepared with thorough and extensive expertise, thanks to which he was regarded an archaeologist. His study of the Pomerania culture in prehistoric times was published in 1896 in the periodical "Baltische Studien" and the following year in the form of a compact reprint in Berlin closes the oldest period in the history of archaeological research in Pomerania. H. Schumann's gravestone in the cemetery of Löcknitz is decorated with a stone slab from the top of a megalith from Wollschow near Prenzlau. The stone axe, numbered 185 in the Schumann collection, was found in the Wkrzańska Forest, probably in the present Forest Park Mścięcino (German: Messenthiner Heide) on the border between Szczecin and Police. No information about the context of its discovery has survived, although some studies mention its origin in grave furnishings. It is a small battle-axe of the Wkrzański type, a characteristic product of the communities of the Corded Ware culture in the Lower Oder region in the younger phases of their settlement.

Krzysztof Kowalski