S5006931 (2)

A CELTIC MINT NEAR KALISZ, POLAND

In recent years the number of archaeological finds associated with the Celtic presence in the area north of the Carpathians and the Sudety has grown perceptibly. This evidence is helping to validate the claim that the role played by the Celts in shaping the culture of Poland during the La Tene and at the beginning of the Roman Period was much greater than has been supposed in the past. Although the road to reconstructing and correctly evaluating this role still seems a long one there is no doubt that numismatic sources have much to contribute on this subject. An important discovery in this regard was madę in the vicinity of Kalisz, Poland, one of the most unexpected archaeological developments recorded in Poland in recent years. It is not an exaggeration to say that this new input represents a qualitative advance in the study of a wide rangę of issues related to trade exchange, circulation of precious metal coinage, far-ranging contacts, the cultural and even political environment of the people who settled around the tum of the era the region between the Vistula and the Odra river.

The stoiy of this discoveiy goes back to 2007 when a multiple-culture site no. 1 (AZP 63-37/10) — or morę properly, a complex of sites — at Janków Drugi, distr. Kalisz, yielded a number of Celtic coins. The locality, which is known in archaeological literaturę under other names (Piłat, Oszczywilk), is found some 15 km north-west of Kalisz, on the right bank of the Prosną river. Site 1 lies on the rim and gentle slope of a sandy ice-marginal valley of the Prosną near an unnamed stream. It was discovered back in 1924 by Józef Kostrzewski who picked up from its surface fragments of ceramics dating from the Pre-Roman, Roman and Medieval times.¹ During the 1930s, on the basis of materiał recovered in the course of fieldwalking, Rudolf Jamka formulated a hypothesis on the existence in this area of a cemetery or a settlement of the umfield culture and of a cemetery from the Roman period. Jan Fitzke, the first to excavate the site, discovered in 1934² a number of settlement pits and graves of Lusatian culture people as well as three inhumations from the Migration period. Among finds from this fieldwork were also fragments of Przeworsk culture pottery from the Pre-Roman period.³ The next investigation, conducted in 1950 by Lech Leciejewicz from the Archaeological Museum in Poznań, mostly identified features attributed to Lusatian culture.⁴ One artefact secured at this time was an enigmatic clay object in the form of a piąte with cup-shaped holes on its surface (see discussion below) interpreted until recently as an ‘bread loaf idol’ or a clay seal from the Early Bronze Age.⁵

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1

   A Karpińska, ‘Nowe nabytki działu przedhistorycznego Muzeum Wielkopolskiego w Poznaniu w latach 1923-1925’, Przegląd Archeologiczny III/3 (1927), p. 239 (number 3 and 5 — as Janków).

2

   J. Fitzke, ‘Odkrycie osady z wczesnego okresu rzymskiego i cmentarzyska z okresu wędrówek ludów w Oszczywilku, w pow. Kaliskim’, Z otchłani wieków IX/2 (1934), pp. 21-38.

3

   Cf. Fitzke, o.c., figs. 17, 35.

4

   L. Leciejewicz, ‘Sprawozdanie z badań’, typescript in archive of the Archaeological Museum in Poznań.

5

   J. F o g e 1, ‘Z badań nad kontaktami społeczeństw ziem polskich wczesnej epoki brązu z kręgiem egejskim’, Archeologia Polski XXII/1 (1977), pp. 102f., PI. 1: 6; T. Malinowski, Wielkopolska w otchłani wieków (Poznań, 1985), p. 206, fig. 111; J. Dąbrowski, Altere Bronzezeit in Polen (Warszawa, 2004), p. 58, PI. 36: 1.