EN
The article reports on a deposit of bronze, glass and amber finds submitted to the State Archaeological Museum in spring of 2005. According to the finder’s report, it had been discovered by accident in 2003 or 2004, at a depth of ca. 20 cm, in a small sandy elevation rising among the meadows south-west of the village Ruszkowo (Fig. 1). The set includes two neckrings (Fig. 2, 3), a spiral bracelet (Fig. 4), six anklets (Fig. 5, 6) – all in bronze – as well as thirty-eight beads in glass (Fig. 7a.b) and four in amber (Fig. 7c). Plain neckrings fashioned from a round-sectioned rod and spiral bracelets/armlets with wire terminals are considered on the south-eastern coast of the Baltic as local forms and are dated starting from BA V until the close of Hallstatt D. The six anklets are all ornamented and have an altogether different provenance. Four penannular pieces, decorated with groups of shallow transverse strokes (Fig. 5a) or with an egg-and-dart design with a varying number of ribs (Fig. 5b–d), find analogy among specimens known from the territory of Bylany Culture where they are dated to Hallstatt C2–D1. The two other anklets, with lightly overlapping terminals (Fig. 6a.b), show evidence of heavy wear manifested as areas of abrasion on the inner face of the hoop and a nearly complete obliteration of their original ornament – egg-and--dart design with a varying number of ribs (Fig. 6c–e). These anklets too presumably originated beyond the Carpathian Range. A local feature seen on these specimens is a fine herringbone ornament applied onto the original egg-and-dart design (Fig. 6). Not less interesting is the beads set (Fig. 7). The form which predominates in late Hallstatt bronze hoards from Mazowsze and Podlasie is dark blue with an ornament of a wavy or zigzag line. However, in the deposit from Ruszkowo there is just a single bead of this type and the rest are uniform dark blue. Entirely unexpected is the presence in this set of four amber beads since at present from the territory of Poland we have a record on only a single deposit, from Szarlej, distr. Inowrocław, in Kujawy, containing beads made of both these raw materials. The hoard from Ruszkowo, like analogous deposits from the area of Bylany Culture, can be dated to late Hallstatt and there is no basis to push this chronology forward into the La Tène. Next to the anklets from beyond the Carpathian Range the hoard includes bronze neckrings and a spiral bracelet characteristic for Lusatian Culture possibly of late Bronze Age date. Also local is the ornament applied over the original, worn away design of the anklets with the lightly overlapping terminals. The delicate narrow and shallow groove marks, easily worn away, are typical features of ornamentation datable to the close of the Hallstatt period. Also distinctive for that age is the inventory of the hoard itself (assuming that all its elements were recovered), which is made up of ornaments only (cf. W. Blajer 2001, p. 67). The mixed provenance of objects assembled in the hoard proves that the people of Lusatian Culture maintained long-distance trade exchange. At the same time it demonstrates that leaves no doubt that during the age of influence of Hallstatt Culture which mainly took in south-western area of today’s Poland, the territory lying to the east of the middle Vistula River did not remain entirely cut off from this impact.