Biała G´Ora: the Forgotten Colony in the Medieval Pomeranian-Prussian
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Biała Gora:´ the forgotten colony in the medieval Pomeranian-Prussian borderlands 1 2 3 Aleksander Pluskowski , Zbigniew Sawicki , Lisa-Marie Shillito , Research Monika Badura4, Daniel Makowiecki5, Mirosława Zabilska-Kunek5, Krish Seetah1,6 & Alexander Brown1 Biała Gora´ 3 is a small settlement founded in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century AD in the disputed Christian borderlands of Northern Europe. The incorporation of Pomerania into the Polish state in the tenth century was followed by a process of colonisation across the lower Vistula valley, which then stalled before resuming in the thirteenth century under the Teutonic Order. Biała Gora´ 3 is unusual in falling between the two expansionist phases and provides detailed insight into the ethnicity and economy of this borderland community. Pottery and metalwork show strong links with both Pomeranian and German colonists, and caches of bricks and roof tiles indicate durable buildings of the kind associated with the monastic and military orders. Evidence for the presence of merchants suggests Biała Gora´ 3 was one of many outposts in the commercial network that shadowed the Crusades. Keywords: Pomerania, lower Vistula, Teutonic Order, Crusades, Greyware, ethnicity, dark earth Supplementary material is provided online at http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/pluskowski341/ 1 Department of Archaeology, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AB, UK (Email: [email protected]; author for correspondence) 2 Muzeum Zamkowe w Malborku, Staro´scinska´ 1, 82-200 Malbork, Poland 3 School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Teviot Place, Edinburgh EH8 9AG, UK 4 Department of Plant Ecology, Laboratory of Palaeoecology and Archaeobotany, University of Gdansk,´ Wita Stwosza 59, 80-308 Gdansk,´ Poland 5 Institute of Archaeology, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Szosa Bydgoska 44/48, 87-100 Torun,´ Poland 6 Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, Main Quad, Building 50, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94035, USA C Antiquity Publications Ltd. ANTIQUITY 88 (2014): 863–882 http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/088/ant0880863.htm 863 Biała Gora:´ the forgotten colony in the medieval Pomeranian-Prussian borderlands Figure 1. Location of the site in relation to the Vistula River and other sites mentioned in the text. Introduction The lower Vistula region lies at the heart of northern Poland, where the delta of this major European river punctuates a landscape of fens and floodplains (Figure 1). The earliest written sources describe this as the borderland between eastern Pomerania, also known as Pomerelia and inhabited by Slavic groups, and the adjacent territories of Pomesania and Pogesania, inhabited by Prussians. By the end of the tenth century AD, the expanding Polish Christian state was securing its control over this region with strongholds, accompanied by the development of religious infrastructure (Buko 2008: 196–99). The borderland became C Antiquity Publications Ltd. 864 Aleksander Pluskowski et al. increasingly dangerous for colonists as tensions between Christian Pomeranians and pagan Prussians escalated. By the thirteenth century, almost all of the Pomeranian settlements east of the River Nogat had been abandoned (Jagodzinski´ 2004). Local conflicts were replaced by a papally sanctioned holy war against the Prussians led by the Teutonic Order, which had reached the lower Vistula by 1233. It took five decades to conquer Prussian tribal lands and re-organise the annexed territories into the Ordensstaat—a theocratic state governed by the Teutonic Order and its episcopal allies. In 1309, the fenland frontier became the Research heartland of the new polity, with the castle of Marienburg (today Malbork) at its centre (Rozenkranz 1965), accompanied by a second wave of predominantly German-speaking colonists sustaining the foundation of new settlements for over a century. The two phases of colonisation—Pomeranian and German—are often treated separately, and the conquest of Prussian tribal lands is associated with an archaeological hiatus between the pre-Christian Baltic culture and the medieval Christian theocracy (Pluskowski 2012). Many of the later medieval colonies in the Ordensstaat are visible today as towns, villages and ruined castles within modern north-eastern Poland, the Russian Kaliningrad Oblast and south-western Lithuania. However, a site occupied during the transitional period has been identified to the north of the village of Biała Gora´ (formerly Weissenburg), c. 18km south-west of Malbork (Sztum County, Pomeranian voivodeship). It represents a unique example of an excavated medieval rural colony in the Vistula borderlands which sustained itself into the fourteenth century. Biała Gora´ 3, first discovered during a field survey in 1972, has been the subject of excavations in 2007 and 2008 by the Department of Archaeology at the Castle Museum in Malbork and in 2011 within the framework of the ‘Ecology of Crusading’ research project (Pluskowski et al. 2011) (Figure 2a). The results from the excavations illustrate the roles played by this unique site, situating it within the processes that fundamentally transformed the cultures and landscapes of the southern Baltic in the thirteenth century. Site location and extent of the cultural horizon Biała Gora´ 3 is located at the edge of an escarpment overlooking the Nogat floodplain. It is bordered to the north by a natural slope which drops steeply down to the floodplain; to the west by the Forest of Sztum (formerly Stuhmische Heide), which extends over 20km between Malbork and Kwidzyn (formerly Marienwerder); and to the south by a small pine grove. Excavations and surveys in 2007, 2008 and 2011 (Figure 2b) revealed that its western edge extended to the former banks of the Nogat. The extent of the site—around four hectares— was delineated by coring, field walking and a gradiometer survey. The survey revealed discrete areas with high magnetic responses which, following excavation, reflected concentrations of buried metal and brick, and traces of potential structures (Figure 2c). One set of discrete signals, aligned in an oblique line at the base of the slope, was investigated, revealing traces of a likely river wharf. The associated stratigraphy suggested that the intensified use of the river bank coincided with an alteration in the hydrological regime of the floodplain. This ‘cultural layer’ at Biała Gora´ 3 was an organic-rich, dark grey sand deposit immediately below the current topsoil, containing significant quantities of artefacts and ecofacts. It varied significantly in depth between 200 and 500mm, merging into various C Antiquity Publications Ltd. 865 Biała Gora:´ the forgotten colony in the medieval Pomeranian-Prussian borderlands Figure 2. a) Location of the site (marked with a red circle) in relation to the village of Biała Gora´ (scale 1:10 000); b) plan of the site showing excavated areas (scale 1:500). Each trench is marked with a number and field season year; c) gradiometer survey of the site with the 2007–2008 trenches indicated. features, mostly pits, cut into the natural sand beneath. It was thicker in the south-western part of the site and disappeared towards the east and south, with a corresponding decrease in artefact and ecofact density (Figure 3). This layer appeared similar to sediments described as ‘dark earth’ in many early urban settlements. This term used to be associated with ideas C Antiquity Publications Ltd. 866 Aleksander Pluskowski et al. Research Figure 3. Soil coring transect map, showing the extent of the ‘dark earth’. of urban decline and abandonment, but is now recognised as relating to a wide range of activities from cultivation to the disposal of refuse (MacPhail et al. 2003; MacPhail & Crowther 2009). These studies have identified that ‘dark earth’ is formed from highly variable biological and pedological processes acting on a mixture of derelict buildings and associated debris, with deposits from the most recent land use. Micro-stratigraphic analysis of the cultural layer Thin section micromorphology was conducted to assess the nature of the cultural layer and to help understand the formation processes of this deposit. Samples were collected by directly cutting blocks from the section face from well preserved profiles and pit features across the site; a total of four blocks were taken (further information is provided in the online supplementary material). The higher frequency of amorphous black organic remains and micro-charcoal fragments in the fine material give this deposit a darker colour than the underlying sand. The fine material between the sand grains is variable, with clustering of some material types, which may relate to degradation and decay of different materials in situ (Figure 4). The presence of charcoal and bone fragments in association with anthropogenic material is a clear indicator of human activity, and the mix of ‘midden-like’ inclusions C Antiquity Publications Ltd. 867 Biała Gora:´ the forgotten colony in the medieval Pomeranian-Prussian borderlands Figure 4. a) Sandy matrix with glauconite grains XPL; b) fungal mass; c) highly degraded bone fragment; d) fragment of ceramic material, probably brick; e) fine organic material; f) degraded charcoal; g) clustering of crystalitic fine material, degraded mortar XPL; h) clustering of fine material; i) degraded charcoal and black amorphous fine material. All others are PPL unless stated otherwise. would support the interpretation of a shallow spread of middening. These observations fit with McPhail’s model