A tape bracelet

A narrow and thick bronze band was used to make this bracelet. It has straight-cut ends, and its surface is covered with an engraved ornament consisting of groups of diagonal and vertical lines, separated by a herringbone motif. It was initially part of a group find, discovered on 19 March 1890 in a marshy meadow called "Schild". The context indicates that it was a sacrificial gift offered to the deities of the water element. The hoard contained nine ribbon bracelets, six of which survived, and two ornamented wide-cuff bracelets. The arrangement of the ornaments in the place where they were deposited was very compact: wide bracelets were inserted one into another, and narrow ones were stuck inside them. The finder, Christian Plathe, a farmer, handed over the deposit to enrich the collection of the Society of History and Antiquities of Pomerania (Towarzystwo Historii i Starożytności Pomorza) in Szczecin, through Professor Blasendorff from Pyrzyce, probably a teacher at the local grammar school. At the end of the 1920s, the Society's resources were taken over by the Pomeranian State Museum (Pomorskie Muzeum Krajowe). The hoard remained there until August 1944, when the collection was evacuated and threatened with war damage. It only returned to Szczecin in 2009 due to the Polish-German exchange of archaeological artefacts. Apart from its excellent display value, the hoard of ornaments from Nieborowo is also of significant scientific importance. This discovery, dated to the 2nd half – the 1st half of the 4th Bronze Age (ca. 1200-1000 BC), represents a very poorly recognised early developmental phase of Lusatian culture in Pomerania. Interestingly, the presented band bracelet belongs to a group of ornaments that do not appear in graves and are known only from hoards.

Dorota Kozłowska