Decorated vase

The clay vessel - a small vase with a quadrilateral top view, decorated with a hatchet ornamentation made with a two-toothed tool and fingernail impressions, originally filled with a white lime inlay - comes from the equipment of a grave from Karsk (German: Schöningsburg). According to the description of Major Berghaus from the beginning of November 1884, it was found by workers during the mounding of swedes on an elevation by the northern edge of the Lake Płoń basin. At a shallow depth they found the remains of a skeleton from the burial of a man, laid with his head to the east, and many objects from his equipment. Above the skull were four earthenware vessels preserved in fragments, and probably also an ornament made of Spondylus shell. Below the legs there was a stone axe, a pair of lower boar tusks (sabre), possibly elements of a necklace and three flint products probably serving as cutting tools. By the decision of Hermann von Schöning, a member of the Reich Parliament and heir to the Karsk estate, some of the artefacts were transferred to the collection of the Society for the History and Antiquity of Pomerania in Szczecin, while others, including the presented vase, were left in his private collection in Żukowo. In 1932, the landed estates of the von Schöning family, situated at Płoń Lake, were auctioned off. However, a vessel, an axe and flint products from Karsk, remaining in the collection kept in Żukowo, which were identified in 1927 by Dr Otto Kunkel, Director of the Szczecin museum, were recovered. Later, Rudolf Willnow, the caretaker of archaeological monuments in the Pyrzyce region, identified the boar tusks, thanks to which, almost half a century after their discovery, the complete burial equipment found its way into the collection of the Provincial Museum of Pomeranian Antiquities. The tomb from Karsk, associated with younger groups with the Corded Ware culture originating from the Danube circle, can be approximately dated to the 1st half of the 5th millennium BC.

Krzysztof Kowalski