Stone axe

The stone axe found in Tanowo (German: Falkenwalde) belongs to a group of discovered archaeological artefacts mentioned in archival documents. Little information about it can be found in the literature. Remaining in the Museum collection for almost a century and a half, it was rarely presented at exhibitions. It is an example of a lower-class museum exhibit, but at the same time, it is a testimony of distant times when it was in use and much closer times when it was found. The axe came to the Szczecin collection of Pomeranian antiquities in 1877. It was donated together with two other finds from forest districts near Jasienica by the then forest inspector Sotzmann from Tanowo. These were not his only gifts to the Society for History and Antiquities of Pomerania (Gesellschaft für Pommersche Geschichte und Alterthumskunde), of which he became a member. In the same year, he enriched the Society's collections with several publications by Johann Daniel Ferdinand Sotzmann, the art historian. He was the son of the well-known Berlin geographer Daniel Friedrich Sotzmann, who, among other things, engraved the 1789 Map of the Pomeranian Province (Karte des Königlich Preussischen Herzogthums Vor- und Hinter Pommern) compiled by David Gilly. The archaeological artefacts handed over by the forester were discovered during earthworks for clearing ditches and building a road. A stone axe from Tanowo, described in the archival records as being made of greenstone, was found in the peat while cleaning a ditch on the grounds of the Vorheide forester lodge south of the village. It bears traces of intensive use, due to which the blade was renewed, and the axe was shortened. The preserved features of the original shape - a pentagonal form with a narrow shank and asymmetry in the side projection - allow connecting the artefact with the Late Neolithic Corded Ware culture.

Krzysztof Kowalski