W poszukiwaniu dźwięków przeszłości. Zagadkowy przedmiot z Ostrowa Lednickiego

• Authors: Wrzesiński Jacek

Title variants

EN

In the search for the sounds of the past. A mysterious object from Ostrów Lednicki

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

People devote almost all their life to ensure themselves and their family a proper standard of living. Their activities focus on acquiring food, organizing a safe living space and ensuring safety. However, if our activity was restricted only to the vital needs formulated in this way, it would not only be a far-reaching simplification but most of all a rejection of the greatest characteristics of a human being — their free will and their mind. These allow one to move to the spiritual realm, and search for social bonds without restricting oneself only to living functions. People need community integration not only through work, but also through entertainment, sensations and experiences, which result from various experiences in life from the moment of birth till death. In the 2nd half of the 10th century the land under the Piast reign was entering the Latin civilization circle. Western cultural trends started to permeate the local traditions. New settlements and cultural centres were developing and the existing ones were being remodeled. The residences of secular and church authorities came to be an indispensable and representative facility in new central places. One of the most important gord centres located in the centre of the Piast rulership is the area of Lednica lake. On the biggest island of the lake — Ostrów Lednicki — in the 1st half of 10th century a gord was established, around which a local settlement centred for several centuries. Just on Lednica gord a complex of residential-sacral buildings was created. For over 150 years research has been conducted on the island — both archaeological and the broadly understood interdisciplinary research connected with it. A gord, an open settlement on the island, settlements and burial grounds on the shores of the lake, as well as the waters of the lake were included in the study. One of the research places included the eastern shore of Lednica island, where at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s constructions and layerings connected with the abutment of the east bridge were uncovered (fi g. 1). This research, carried out by Mateusz Łastowiecki in excavation I/87, brought valuable information concerning the construction of the bridge, a point of contact between the bridge and the island, the character of the layerings, and a significant number of monuments, among which the objects made of organic raw material constituted a significant part. A tiny wooden object was one of them (inv. no. 103/91 – MPP/A/158). Unfortunately it was preserved fragmentarily (fi g. 2). It was made of foliaceous wood — beech (European beech Fagus sylvatica L) — and it has a clearly legible and neat form. It resembles a heart in shape (preserved roughly in half) with three holes — two wholly retained and one partially (fi g. 3). A straight broken back-end goes from the wider part of the “heart”. If we look at the object along its longer axis, it can be noticed that the holes do not align — vertically they mark three separate lines. The total length of the preserved piece is 11.6 cm, while the width in the widest place is 3.9 cm. The diameter of the holes, which were drilled slightly aslope with respect to the flat surface of an object, is around 0.6 cm. The “subcordate” part is 8.2 cm long and 0.8 cm thick. In the side plane of the object the “subcordate” part moves at a slight angle to the longitudinal one. There is a slight perpendicular protrusion, a convex — a kind of a threshold — at the point of contact of the two parts. Two transversal cuts around 0.8 cm away from one another are visible at this threshold. At the bottom ultimate longitudinal part, a clear perpendicular cut which creates a shallow (2 millimeter) step which goes to the edge of the fracture is visible (fi g. 5). At the upper part of the described piece, two small symmetrically placed indentations are distinguishable. The object was found in the excavation marked I/87, in quarter B, in the layer IIIa3. On the basis of the cultural material which appeared in the exposed layers and taking into consideration the dates of dendrochronological analysis, the chronology of the IIIa–d layers (in which the described object was found) can be dated to the 2nd–3rd quarter of the 11th century. The described piece of a distinctively formed object certainly comes from the damaged musical instrument. The broken piece is a peghead plate with a short neck. As already mentioned, it can come from a rebec — a stringed musical instrument. The origins of the rebec can be ambiguous. It is rooted in the Middle East, and it reached Europe through the Arabs. The name of the instrument derives from Arabic, in which it is known as rababu. It appears in a similar form from at least the 10th century, and the period between the 10th and 14th centuries is the time of its greatest splendour. Bowed string instruments — rebecs and vielles — were depicted in medieval iconography. On the basis of these sources, a classification of the instrument is possible. It shows that several kinds of these instruments were built in the Middle Ages (fi g. 6, 7). Pieces of diverse objects which are found during archaeological excavations, very often create a lot of problems during the identification of their original appearance and the reconstruction of the intended use of a particular piece. The above-mentioned team made an attempt to identify a piece of the find from Lednica. The initial examination, discussion over the details of the construction and the foregoing experience directed our search towards musical instruments — chordophones — i.e. wooden stringed instruments. The medieval iconography does not facilitate the identification. Information about the use of chordophones by the Slavs already comes from the end of the 6th century. According to the message of the Byzantine writer Theophylact Simocatta, in 591 soldiers from a personal unit of the emperor Maurice (Maurikios) captured three unarmed Slavs, who had come from the Baltic Sea (Sclaveni from the West Ocean). At the moment of their capture they were unarmed, but they were carrying musical instruments — kitharas. It is believed that this is the oldest written source which confirms that Slavs were familiar with musical practices, and the instruments described in it were κιθάραι (kitharas) and λύραι (lyres). It is thought that these names can refer to the plucked string instruments with a corpus-soundbox, to which the Proto-Slavic name gusles can refer. The oldest Cyril-Methodius’ Bible translation speaks in favour of equating the name κιθάραι with Slavic gusles. Interestingly, we can read twice about stringed instruments in Gallus Anonymus, who describes the reign of the first Piast rulers. So far, less than ten wooden chordophones from archaeological research in the area of the Piast reign, from the 10th–15thc., have been known. Lyres, vielles, a nyckelharpa and a gittern have been identified among those. Two wooden lyres come from the 10th–11th century cultural layerings of a gord in Opole. Another lyre, which comes from the 2nd half of the 13th century, was found during archaeological research in a fishing village in Gdańsk. A piece of a wooden outer board of an instrument — probably of a nyckelharpa — from Wolin, can be dated to the 3rd quarter of the 13th century. A gittern of a small size comes from the layerings of the 15th century Elbląg, whereas two other instruments classified as vielles were obtained in the course of archaeological research. One of them comes from 14th century Elbląg, the other one, dated to the 16th century, was found during excavation works in Płock. The greatest number of wooden instruments — from the areas which were in the closest vicinity to the Piast reign — was found on the territory of Ruthenia, especially in Veliky Novgorod. The shape of an object found at Ostrów Lednicki and its detailed examination supported by the material from excavation works permitted the suggestion that this is a part of a wooden stringed instrument. It could probably be a peghead headstock of a rebec’s neck, an instrument where the strings were rubbed with the bow. The reconstructed instrument from Lednica was built from two pieces of wood. The headstock plate, the neck and the corpus were made from one piece, and the soundbox, which was cut into the corpus, was covered with an outer board. During the reconstruction of the complete, probable original look of the instrument, several small but legible signals, visible on the described piece, were taken into consideration. The state of preservation fostered the moderately correct reconstruction of the upper part of the instrument. The fracture of the neck appeared just at the horizontal axis of an object, while the partially preserved upper part of a headstock allowed one to line out a line which gave it a full shape. A very small part of a neck survived, but it was long enough to adjust the proportions. Fortunately, the presence of a small transverse cut suggested the point of the fixing and glueing of the outer board. At the point of transition from a headstock into the neck there are traces which allow one to conclude where a fixing for hanging (?) an instrument was placed. Two holes and a fragment of a third one preserved in the subcordate part formed a basis for drawing conclusions about the number of strings and the arrangement of the string pegs. The traces of the cuts on a small transverse bump-fret (a nut) constituted a clue concerning the number of strings and their distance over the neck. The angle created by the headstock and the preserved piece of the neck, as well as the location of a fret, allowed one to roughly work the further part of an instrument out. A subtle but legible indentation at the neck, marked the fixing point of the outer board of a corpus. The reconstructed instrument was equipped with a flat bridge, and strings from sheep intestines were prepared. The rebec reached 46 cm in length, and at the widest point it was 10 cm wide. A bow (length of 67 cm) was made from willow switch, whereas the string from horsehair. What is the significance of the small piece of a wooden object — found during research at the Lednica bridge abutment — for the inhabitants of Lednica? Who was it for and what was its role? We will probably never find this out. However, as a result of the research and discussions we can state that this is a piece of a peghead of a wooden stringed instrument. It could be a part of a gusle (as generally understood, stringed instruments), maybe of a rebec, possibly of a gudok. The name of the find is certainly significant for musicologists, historians who focus on musical instruments, or music theorists; however, for those who conduct research at Ostrów Lednicki and study the gord which was established there, the identification of an instrument itself is the most relevant. It is important that we can say that at the time when the gord with sacred places was functioning at Ostrów Lednicki, there were musicians who were playing not only liturgical music but certainly secular music too.

Keywords

PL

Ostrów Lednicki; wczesne średniowiecze; drewniane instrumenty muzyczne

EN

Ostrów Lednicki; early Middle Ages; wooden musical instruments

• Publisher: Muzeum Pierwszych Piastów na Lednicy
• Journal: Studia Lednickie
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 18
• Pages: 151-178

Dates

published

2019

Contributors

author

Wrzesiński Jacek

• Muzeum Pierwszych Piastów na Lednicy

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Identifiers

ISSN

0860-7893