This paper presents the small coin hoard from Buskow (municipality of Neuruppin, district of Ostprignitz-Ruppin, federal state of Brandenburg), which was discovered with a metal detector and then excavated in 2019. The treasure consists of 49 pennies from the German Empire, among which are also those with silver plating and a copper core. It was deposited c. 1100-1105 in or on the edge of a settlement pit or house site within a Late Slavic settlement that existed from the 11th to the first half of the 13th c. The hoard sheds light on peasant prosperity and coin-supported trade in the rural milieu, the emergence of nominal money in the late phase of the weight money economy, and the economic flourishing of the Late Slavic period, which occurred despite times of war.

Article Dariusz Adamczyk, Monetarisierungsmomente, Kommerzialisierungszonen oder fiskalische Währungslandschaften? Edelmetalle, Silberverteilungsnetzwerke und Gesellschaften in Ostmitteleuropa (800–1200) (Deutsches Historisches Institut Warschau. Quellen und Studien 38). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2020. 305 S., 26 Tab., 11 Kt., 2 Diagramme. ISBN 978-3-447-11464-6. was published on March 16, 2023 in the journal Praehistorische Zeitschrift (volume 0, issue 0).

Since the eighth century the economic and social complexity of the north-western area of Slavic settlement increased rapidly: Scandinavian-Slavic coastal trading places were established, strongholds were built, and powerful tribal rulers made their appearance in written sources. Finds of victims of violence, military equipment, fire debris in hillforts, and other archaeological record indicate that this process was not entirely due to economic growth and peaceful development, but that it was also a result of power struggles between the Slavic rulers as well as wars between north-western Slavs and groups from outside. At the same time significant quantities of Oriental silver coins flowed into this territory as a result of intensive trade connections between peoples of the Baltic Sea region – including north-western Slavs – and the Orient. Written sources suggest that people were an important merchandise. This paper deals with the archaeological and historical evidence for slave hunting and slave trade – written sources, iron chains, human bones in settlement contexts, the inflow of foreign silver et cetera – and with the relationship between violence, warfare and slavery from the eighth to the eleventh/twelfth century in the northern part of the area settled by western Slavs, with a focus on modern-day north-eastern Germany. It also considers the function of the strongholds, the possible role of the coastal trading places as slave markets, and the significance of these phenomena for the economic and social development of the early medieval Slavic society.

The cliché of the archaeological invisibility of slavery has been, in the last two decades, undermined by research on areas and periods as diverse as prehistoric Europe (e.g. Gronenborn 2001; Parker Pearson and Thorpe 2005), classical Mediterranean (e.g. Thompson 2003; George 2013), medieval and early modern Africa (e.g. Lane and MacDonald 2011), or pre-colonial and plantation-age America (e.g. Marshall 2015b). Attempts to reflect on slavery on the basis of the material evidence have also been made, since the 1990s, in central and northern Europe (e.g. Henning 1992, 2004, 2008; Gustafsson 2009; Raffield 2019), but they remain timid, no doubt because of a certain reluctance to accept slave-holding and slave trade as valid interpretative frameworks applicable to the archaeology of early medieval east-central and northern Europe.

Inhumation burials gradually replaced the tradition of cremating the deceased from the 10th century AD onwards and have been dominating the North-Western Slavic regions since the 11th/12th century AD. However, excavated human remains, as well as funerary containers, from the Late Slavic period (11th to 12th century AD) show evidence of fire exposure. A few inhumation burials from the Wusterhausen/Dosse burial ground - a typical burial site from the latest pagan times - show signs of a partial cremation. Although normally a rare finding in Late Slavic inhumation burials, such traces of an impact of fire were detected on several burials from various locations. The character and purpose of these burns (cremations?) has already been under investigation for a long time. They might be related to religiously motivated cremation rituals, the result of "grave fires" or the continuity of pagan traditions. Within the scope of this paper, with the Wusterhausen examples, we are taking a closer look at the different implementations of cremation and fire exposure during burial practices in Slavic regions from the 10th to 12th century AD and their characteristics. It seems probable that, even if diverse in their nature, the traces of fire exposure are linked to the atmosphere of religious changes that was omnipresent during this period.

A small group of richly decorated spurs has been known for a long time for their characteristic non-ferrous metal covering as well as massive bronze or brass thorn points. Most of them have been found in in the states of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. They are so similar that they could have been manufactured, if not in the same workshop, at least in the same region. The embossed metal sheath, reminiscent of the Late Slavic technology of sheath fittings, could indicate a the Slavic craft tradition. The latest find from a deserted village of Kastaven near Sähle, Oberhavel district in northern Brandenburg, sheds new light on this group of objects. The Kastaven spur has been found in the central area of the settlement which existed between the early 13th and the 15th centuries, in the vicinity of ruins of a church or a churchyard. The spur was probably lost at the village foundation phase, in the early 13th century. This context is of importance to the disputed chronology of the entire spur group, dated back to the late 12th and the early 13th centuries. The finds in Hamburg, Holstein, Eastern Mecklenburg and Northern Brandenburg indicate contacts between the élites in the southwest of the Baltic, related to migrations of petty nobility within the German Eastern Settlement or a communication network of the Slavic Leaders in the Abodrite/Mecklenburg cultural area.

In near-surface geophysics, ground-based mapping surveys are routinely employed in a variety of applications including those from archaeology, civil engineering, hydrology, and soil science. The resulting geophysical anomaly maps of, for example, magnetic or electrical parameters are usually interpreted to laterally delineate subsurface structures such as those related to the remains of past human activities, subsurface utilities and other installations, hydrological properties, or different soil types. To ease the interpretation of such data sets, we propose a multi-scale processing, analysis, and visualization strategy. Our approach relies on a discrete redundant wavelet transform (RWT) implemented using cubic-spline filters and the à trous algorithm, which allows to efficiently compute a multi-scale decomposition of 2D data using a series of 1D convolutions. The basic idea of the approach is presented using a synthetic test image, while our archaeo-geophysical case study from North-East Germany demonstrates its potential to analyze and process rather typical geophysical anomaly maps including magnetic and topographic data. Our vertical-gradient magnetic data show amplitude variations over several orders of magnitude, complex anomaly patterns at various spatial scales, and typical noise patterns, while our topographic data show a distinct hill structure superimposed by a microtopographic stripe pattern and random noise. Our results demonstrate that the RWT approach is capable to successfully separate these components and that selected wavelet planes can be scaled and combined so that the reconstructed images allow for a detailed, multi-scale structural interpretation also using integrated visualizations of magnetic and topographic data. Because our analysis approach is straightforward to implement without laborious parameter testing and tuning, computationally efficient, and easily adaptable to other geophysical data sets, we believe that it can help to rapidly analyze and interpret different geophysical mapping data collected to address a variety of near-surface applications from engineering practice and research.

In the 14th century, the Teutonic Order and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania engaged in severe armed conflicts whose central element was raids on enemy territory. Since nearly all written evidence was authored by one side in the conflict, the chroniclers of the Order, the reliability of the reports in respect to violence and cruelties is not clear. Therefore, archaeological discoveries are of great importance for understanding these wars and their reality. An instructive example is the deserted town of Alt-Wartenburg in Warmia (Barczewko near Olsztyn, Northeast Poland), which was captured and destroyed in 1354 by a Lithuanian army and afterwards abandoned. Recent research has revealed considerable traces of the town’s violent end: burnt houses, weapons, skeletons of the victims, and other traces of ravages and violence. The site and the finds are discussed against the background of the written record, the warfare of its time and region, and other archaeological witnesses of this period.

The Cistercian nunnery of Seehausen (Uckermark), existing from the 13th to the 16th century, offers interesting insights into the organisation of waste disposal in late medieval monasteries. At the shore of the neighbouring lake posts and timbers of a platform were discovered, and around it hundreds of complete ceramic vessels and numerous other finds were recovered. Moreover, debris which was rich in medieval finds was also dumped at the shore of the lake. The subaquatic finds document two different aspects of monastic waste disposal: part of the material was littered at a lakeside lavatory over a long time, while the other part, together with the debris, was disposed of after a fire disaster in the monastery which is recorded for 1445. The Seehausen find complex, which is currently analysed within the framework of a research project, is discussed as part of the issue of the role of waters for medieval monastic waste management.