„Kroczyce”
Kroczyce, a locality in Zawiercie district in the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland. The cave at the village of Kroczyce-Okupne known to the locals as “Wisieluch” (Hanged Man), reportedly takes its name from the lynching of a Gestapo collaborator at the end of World War II. The cave interior contains a several metres’ thick sequence of cave deposits seriously disturbed by calcite prospecting. About 10 years ago the site attracted interest of treasure hunters who recovered many objects associated with past use of the cave. Next to a great quantity of pottery fragments more notable were some complete wheel-made pottery vessels attributed to the →Przeworsk Culture fired in an oxygen-poor atmosphere (blue ceramics) and fragments of large storage vessels with a strongly thickened rim, so-called Krausengefässe. Other finds include rotary querns, three brooches type Almgren 158, a fragment of a bronze belt mount, a bronze axe-shaped pendant and an amber bead turned on a lathe. Quite striking is a group of some 100 Roman denarii (Vespasian to Didius Julianus), with some barbarian imitations among them as well as a looped →solidus of Constantius II, and several pieces of finery with direct analogies in the Lower Danube region and attributable to the so-called Dančeny-Brangstrup horizon: two square-shaped gold pendants decorated with granulation, 13 silver pendants: 9 diamond-shaped, 2 axe-shaped and 2 crescent-shaped (lunula) forms. The latest of these finds date from the early phase of the →Migration Period. The pendants have the largest number of analogies in the Cherniakhiv Culture and the Sântana de Mureş Culture – especially, their territory in Transylvania and Moldavia. A very large group of finds documents early medieval and later use of the Hanging Cave. Of these possibly the most interesting is the debris from the forgery of copper shillings of the Polish King John Casimir (type boratynka).
A few single cremation burials discovered close to the cave are early →Migration Period. Finds datable to this period have been recovered in other caves of the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland.
One early interpretation is that the caves of the Polish Jura were used as refuges by the Przeworsk Culture people during the invasions of the →Huns (?). An alternate explanation is that they played a role in worship.
Since 2013 the cave and its surrounding area have been investigated by a research team from the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Warsaw led by Marcin Rudnicki. This fieldwork identified some areas in the cave with an undisturbed stratigraphy documenting use of the cave as early as during the Mesolithic age. Finds of hearths, pottery fragments, characteristic flint flakes and fragments of finished tools indicate occupation of the main chamber of the cave by the people of the Corded Ware Culture and its use for a flint axe workshop.
Most importantly, the largest group of finds date from around the turn of the 4th and the 5th AD (early →Migration Period). This was a time of substantial alterations made to the cave interior – the bottom of its main chamber assumed the form of a level platform, on which rested a number of as yet unidentified timber structures. Finds of animal bone and fragments of pottery vessels suggest that the chamber was used for habitation purposes. This interpretation is undermined however by the presence of human remains and group deposits. Objects from past random discoveries: silver Roman coins – denarii; a silver pendant and two others, made of bronze; silver and gold pendants and the Constantius II →solidus – previously interpreted as a single deposit – are more likely to represent at least two hoards. Further artefacts recovered in 2014 are two bronze brooches buried in a small hole, and – found a few dozen centimetres away - bronze pendants and beads of amber and glass – appear to be the remains of a necklace. This shows that several deposits of a different content were deposited in the main chamber of the cave around the turn of the 4th and the 5th century. The presence of human remains suggest that the cave was a sacred place – the site of sacrificial offerings: food, everyday objects, but also – valuables, coins and humans. But it is also feasible that the cave was used for refuge during unsafe times and the sanctuary it was expected to provide proved ineffective - the human remains and the cached objects document some dramatic episode of 1500 ago. This is supported by the presence of a burnt spread – the traces of a fire which would have ended the →Migration Period use of the cave. All of these discoveries are made even more remarkable by the presence in the finds assemblage of forms which have analogies in central and southern Ukraine – territory settled at the time by the Cherniakhiv Culture people who are identified with →Goths. One of these forms is the bronze pendant trapeze-shaped sheet foil spangles.
Photos: →Kroczyce 2013 →Kroczyce 2014
MR
Literature: A. Dymowski, Skarby monet rzymskich odkryte w ostatnim czasie na terenie Jury Krakowsko-Częstochowskiej, Wiadomości Numizmatyczne LI, 2007, p. 54-78; A. Bursche, Function of Roman coins in Barbaricum of LaterAntiquity. Anthropologicalessay, [in:] Bursche, A., Ciołek, R. & Wolters, R. (eds.), Roman Coins outside the Empire. Ways and Phases, Contexts and Function, Wetteren 2008, p. 395-416; A. Bursche, J. Kowalski (ed.), Barbarzyńskie Tsunami - Okres Wędrówek Ludów w dorzeczu Odry i Wisły, Warszawa-Szczecin 2017.