The heraldic mount from Ciemna Cave at Ojców. From studies in themedieval culture of chivalry

• Authors: Wojenka Michał
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The focus of the article is analysis of a mount in the form of an heraldic escutcheon from the archaeological excavation of Cciemna Cave at ojców, powiat Kraków, Poland. The shape of the mount appears to be that of a medieval european heater shield, with a maximum length of 3.9 cm and three rivets for attachment. non-destructive metallograpy analysis established its material as copper (with traces of lead and arsenic) and the presence of a thin layer of tin on the outer face of the mount, the tin layer now largely eroded. The rivets are presumably copper too. The design, in repoussé and engraving, presumably is modelled on heraldic devices: the field halved vertically (party per pale), the dexter field with horizontal bars (barry), the sinister field with diagonal bars (bendy). The design seen on the mount could not be attributed to any concrete coat-of-arms. The mount from Ciemna Cave was found to have a series of analogies, mainly from central and western europe, most notably, in a deposit from felsőszentkirály in hungary with fittings similar in their decoration and execution method to the find from Ciemna Cave. Drawing on insights afforded by some of its analogies the author proposes to interpret the mount from ciemna cave as an element from a knight’s belt. This view is supported by the discovery during the archaeological investigation of ciemna cave of another medieval belt fitting. The heraldic mount from ciemna cave may be dated, drawing on the chronology of its analogies and that of the rest of the medieval finds inventory from the cave, to the second half of the thirteenth-fourteenth century. it is not impossible that the mount from Ciemna Cave (similarly as “military” artefacts recovered from the caves of Kraków–Częstochowa Upland) is a material reflection of the legend of ojców — an account on how duke władysław the elbow-high found shelter in the caves of the region, still alive today

Keywords

EN

Poland; High Middle Ages; Ciemna Cave; heraldic mount; chivalry; chivalric belt

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Umiejętności
• Journal: Acta Archaeologica Carpathica
• Year: 2013
• Volume: XLVIII
• Pages: 227-263

Contributors

author

Wojenka Michał