Historians find swords and spears of long-forgotten warrior tribe in ancient cemetery

Republication from the first news 

Yotvingian sword found in cemetery. Photo by Jakub Mikołajczuk/Muzeum Okręgowe w Suwałkach.

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Archaeologists have discovered rare swords, spears and knives among hundreds of items belonging to a long-disappeared people famed for their warrior culture in the Suwałki region of eastern Poland.

The weapons were among 500 items dating back around 1,000 years dug up on the site of a cemetery belonging to the Yotvingians.

Single-Edged Sword, Spears & Relics discovered in ancient cemetery

Republication from  heritagedaily.com

 

Przeworsk culture spearhead and some artifacts from the period of Roman influence, found near Bielsko-Biała (Wikimedia commons)

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Archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Kraków have made several discoveries of spearheads, clasps for fastening clothes, a richly ornamented spindle, iron needles, and a single-edged sword whilst conducting excavations of a graveyard site in Bejsce, Poland.

Researchers believe the site may be associated with the Przeworsk culture, an Iron Age society that dates from the 3rd century BC to the 5th century AD from central and southern Poland.

Expanse of the Hanseatic League

A map of the expanse of the Hanseatic League, mostly known as Hansa (copyright: W. Heinemann / Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig). The Hanseatic League was a large commercial and also politico-military confederation of merchant guilds and commercial towns in North and Central Europe.

The Growth of the Swedish empire

This is an interesting map on the Growth of the Swedish empire in 1560-1660. Acquisitions are noted in accordance with the reigns of the respective Swedish kings. Note that in 1560 the Kingdom of Sweden had already

Stanford researchers find clues to the Baltic Crusades in animal bones, horses and the extinct aurochs

Source: Stanford University

The Teutonic Order’s Marienburg Castle, Monastic state of the Teutonic Knights, now Malbork, Poland

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By Melissa Pandika

 

Stanford Assistant Professor Krish Seetah and Reading University student Rose Calis analyze animal bones in the basement of Riga Castle, Latvia. (Photo: Aleks Pluskowski)

Stanford researchers have discovered that pagan villages plundered by medieval knights during the little-known Baltic Crusades had some problems in common with the modern-day global village.

Among them: deforestation, asymmetric warfare and species extinction.

According to a research paper published in Science, a project investigating the Baltic Crusades’ profound environmental legacy could yield valuable insight into colonialism, cultural changes and ecological exploitation – relevant issues not only throughout history, but especially in today’s increasingly globalized society.

The researchers, including professors at Stanford and in Europe, are drawing from disciplines as disparate as history and chemistry to analyze their findings, which they’ve already begun synthesizing into a database of unprecedented depth and scope.

Their study spans the years from the 12th century to the 16th century, when the Teutonic Order, a Germanic brotherhood of Christian knights, waged war against the last indigenous pagan societies in Europe in a region that includes modern-day Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus and parts of Sweden and Russia.