A rare clay cinerary urn shaped like a house discovered in 2023 was presented to the public last month for the first time. The rare artifact is only the fourth house urn discovered in Poland since World War II, and this one is unique in design. It is a rectangular model house on nine legs with a round door on one of the long sides. It dates to the Early Iron Age (780-640 B.C.).
The house urn was discovered in Bożepole Wielkie during a rescue excavation at a site slated for construction of a new distribution center. The excavation ran from March until the end of the September, and several archaeological teams were employed by the Lidl company to survey dozens of hectares of land. In May, archaeologists came across a cist grave made of carefully arranged multi-colored stone slabs. Encased inside of it was the urn.
The urn was transferred to the Archaeological Museum in Gdańsk for specialized conservation and research. To get a more accurate understanding of its contents, researchers conducted a CT scan. The imaging showed that the urn had several cracks and fissures, and was only holding its walls, floor and roof together thanks to the soil that filled it. The scans confirmed that there were a great many osteological remains, much more than one person would have left.
Analyses have so far confirmed that the house urn contains a multiple burial. The remains of an adult man, a child over ten years old and at least two other people, one of them a woman, have been identified. In total, almost seven pounds of bones were excavated from the urn.
Cremation funerals were the norm in Eastern Pomerania in the 7th century B.C. The bodies of the deceased were burned on a pyre and once the burning was complete, all of the bone fragments were removed and placed in an urn along with small items, usually bronze pieces, belonging to the deceased.
Archaeologists had to reconstruct the urn from the ground up, creating custom molded replicas of the feet to replace the missing ones. They were finally able to reattach every element using plaster and adhesives to make it possible for the urn to go on public display.
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