Gdańsk/ A 2,600-year-old house urn has been presented at the Archaeological Museum

The Archaeological Museum in Gdańsk has publicly displayed for the first time a house urn discovered in 2023 in Bożepole Wielkie, Wejherowo County. The unique find dates back to the early Iron Age, approximately 2,600 years ago.

The presentation of the house urn took place on Thursday at the Błękitny Baranek Granary - a branch of the Archaeological Museum in Gdańsk.

– This is a unique monument because it is only the fourth such house urn discovered after World War II, and also because of the state of preservation of this monument – ​​Dr. Piotr Fudziński, head of the Early Iron Age Department at the Archaeological Museum in Gdańsk, told PAP.

Following the discovery of the urn in 2023 in Bożepole Wielkie during salvage research conducted by the Archaeological Heritage Foundation, the Pomeranian Voivodeship Conservator of Monuments decided to transfer it to the Archaeological Museum in Gdańsk. There, it underwent painstaking and time-consuming conservation and meticulous research, including an anthropological analysis of the human skeletal remains.

Piotr Fudziński explained that in the 7th century BC, a cremation funeral rite was used in Eastern Pomerania.

"This means that the deceased person was placed on a pyre, and meticulous care was taken to remove all the bones after the cremation process and place them in an urn, along with small items belonging to the deceased. These were usually small metal objects, most often bronze," he said.

He added that in the case of the house urn from Bożepole Wielkie we are dealing with a multiple burial.

"This means that the bones of more than one person were deposited in a single urn. In this case, we definitely have the burial, certified by an anthropologist, of a child over ten years of age, a man, and probably two other people, including a woman," explains Fudziński.

In the future, the house urn from Bożepole Wielkie is to be included in a new archaeological exhibition at the renovated Naturalists' House on Mariacka Street in Gdańsk. (PAP)

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