EN
The cemetery of Cloche Grave Culture at Wieliszew, comm. loco, was discovered in 1985 and excavated, starting the following year, over four seasons, probably in its entirety (Fig. 2). Situated in an area of dune sands it suffered substantially from production activity of a fruit-and-vegetable processing plant, then owner of the area (Fig. 3). In the course of investigation ‘features’ were identified – when the level of preservation made it possible to define at least approximately their nature and function – and ‘clusters’, presumably the remains of destroyed features – when encountering groups of pottery fragments and/or cremated bones. A total of 47 features were explored: 46 graves belonging to the discussed gravefield, a pit from the Medieval Period and four ‘clusters’. A human skeleton burial discovered outside the burial ground is presumably of modern date (Fig. 20). The cemetery at Wieliszew belongs to the category of so-called ‘pure’ funerary complexes, ie, ones which do not feature grave forms and finds typical for Pomeranian Culture, which started to be recorded in Mazowsze during approximately the same period as Cloche Grave Culture (at the end of Early Iron Age) and left its imprint on the ideology and economy of the local population. Three categories of grave deposits were identified as follows: cloche graves (22), urned cremation graves (7), unurned cremation graves (2). The remaining graves were too deteriorated to identify their form. The graves were mostly set within pure sand, without traces of the cremation pyre. Anthropological analysis of bone remains was not made as the degree of destruction and mixing would have made the result unreliable. Cloche graves consisted basically of three vessels: an urn covered with a bowl, the two covered with a much larger vessel – a cloche; occasionally there was also a fourth vessel, a bowl standing under the urn or, as in feature 17, a miniature jug. The cloches was always inverted, the bowl placed either bottom down or up. The graves had no stone or ceramic settings, a feature occasionally encountered in other cemeteries in Mazowsze. In addition to bone remains ten burials produced small objects which mixed with the bone fragments – metal, glass, bone and antler items – all damaged to a greater or lesser extent by fire (Figs. 18d, 29d, 35a, 36a–c); as such these objects may be interpreted as dress accessories of the buried individual. Urned graves consisted of a cinerary urn containing bone fragments and covered with a bowl, all except one inverted; only a single urn was covered by a base of another vessel. The graves contained no other grave goods. Pit graves consisted of bone remains placed within a pit in a compact arrangement suggesting that originally they were wrapped tightly in fabric or hide. There were no grave goods. Presumably the pit grave category included two other features which, unfortunately, were recorded inadequately; they contained cremated animal bones and animal bones with a small admixture of human bone. Cremated animal burials, relatively frequent in Cloche Grave Culture, are always deposited within a grave pit. A number of isolated animal bones was recorded at Wieliszew, occasionally also inside cloche and urn graves. Some features were set so close together that they must be synchronic At Wieliszew there were six or seven such complexes consisting of two or three graves, always of cloche type. Beside synchronic deposition this arrangement indicates existence of ties, presumably of kinship, which linked the buried individuals, but the lack of anthropological determinations makes it impossible to trace any possible relationships. We can only conclude that individuals buried in these graves had been accorded a very special form of cloche grave burial and were accompanied in death by furnishings exceptionally rich for the whole cemetery, all of which suggests that they must have occupied a special position in their community. In Cloche Grave Culture there is no general tradition of producing pottery vessels specifically for funerary purposes. Nevertheless it is difficult to image the thin-walled elaborately ornamented urn vessels being used for everyday domestic purposes. In some (but not all) jugs and mugs the handle was missing and was not discovered elsewhere in the grave pit; perhaps handles were knocked off from vessels in some symbolic ritual. Presence in the grave inventory of non-ceramic grave goods is confirmed most often only by traces of copper patina or (exceptionally) iron rust adhering to the bones. The only iron object was an item of toiletry – tweezers. Other small finds included fragments of copper or bronze wire and sheet, melted remains of glass beads, and objects fashioned from bone and antler: two small plates with a central perforation, a bone pin, and a heavily burnt ornamented hammerlike antler object (however, not a single find of a similar hammer is recorded in Poland). All these objects, regardless of their material, are forms with known analogies in Hallstatt material, its younger phase in particular. The pottery from Wieliszew does not differ technologically from ceramics known from other ‘pure’ Cloche Grave cemeteries in Mazowsze. Ornamentation is relatively modest and tends to be uncommon. The only exception are four bowls with ornamentation widely different from the typical Cloche Grave Culture repertoire (Figs. 16d, 25c, 26e, 35b). All four bowls are decorated with motives produced by making short and deep incisions arranged in wavy line, star or flower pattern. The composition of these motives is fairly unskilled, the artist apparently failed to plan the individual designs on the vessel body, something never observed in Cloche Grave pottery. Another exceptional find is a bowl with inlaid design of four small metal rings pressed into the soft clay (Fig. 41a.b). This decorative technique is not recorded either in Cloche Grave Culture or in the region. Dating ceramics in Cloche Grave Culture is very difficult. In their features the vessels from Wieliszew are consistent with the assumption that the cemetery was already in use in late Hallstatt period, before Pomeranian Culture would have left its imprint on the funerary rite or pottery styles. Archaeological evidence is insufficient to determine whether the gravefield continued into early La Tčne but its small size probably reflects its short duration. The presence of the four exceptional bowls discussed earlier, almost certainly the product of one pottery-maker, helps to confine the time of deposition of graves which contained these vessels to the period of professional activity of a this individual (35 years at most?). It is also likely that during this time burials were deposited within an area confined on both sides by graves containing the vessels in question. The graves are additionally dated by their grave goods of Hallstatt date (Fig. 54). Imaginably, outside the area marked by the graves with bowls burials were deposited during a younger phase of the cemetery but for lack of evidence this issue cannot be examined in more detail. Excavation at Wieliszew produced a small body of artefacts attributable to other culture units and chronological divisions: flints (discussed in A. J. To¬maszewski 2006), 3 fragments of Trzciniec Culture pottery (Fig. 55f), 6 fragments of Early Medieval vessels (Fig. 55a.c–e.g). A medieval pit (Fig. 48), presumably associated with production activity, contained in its fill a fragment of a gothic hand-moulded brick and a fragment of a wheel--thrown jug (Fig. 51a); another fragment of a turned medieval vessel was also discovered, not associated with the pit in question (Fig. 55b).