Studia Lednickie, tom XVI (2017)

The purpose of this paper is to outline the issues related to the protection of archaeological heritage for conservation services. It focuses on the issues of cooperation between administrative units at various levels in the broadly understood system of the protection of monuments and shows the dissonance between the theory and practice of conservation. The value of cultural heritage and its significance for the society are important points in the reflection on the protection of monuments not only in the conservation milieu but also in scholarly debates. This is reflected in the parts devoted to the values and properties of heritage. The effective capability for the implementation of the law by conservation services is illustrated through the example of three sites entered in the register of monuments: Moraczewo (site 16), Lednogóra (site 8) and Goślinowo (site 4).

This paper presents the preliminary results of excavations carried out at an inhumation cemetery discovered in 2013 in Giecz (site 10). During three excavation seasons (2014–2016), 55 burials were uncovered and examined, including graves with unusual arrangements, rich grave goods or traces of wooden structures. Most of the burials contained items of everyday use, ornaments or coin fragments, which allow us to date the cemetery tentatively to the eleventh-thirteenth centuries. The site is currently investigated under a research project carried out at the Archaeological Reserve in Giecz.

Early medieval site Gz 10 yields a new human skeletal collection from Giecz, Poland. So far 55 individuals have been recovered, just over half of whom are subadults. It is estimated that the majority of adults were 35–50 years old and the majority of subadults were younger than six years old at the time of death. Ongoing analysis includes indicators of stress (healed cribra orbitalia and porotic hyperostosis and linear enamel hypoplasia), infection, periodontal disease, degenerative joint disease, trauma, stature, and population structure.

This paper describes the procedures for exploration,ocumentation and recovery of the third dugout boat retrieved from the bottom of Lake Lednica. It also recalls briefly the story of the recovery of the two previous boats. Due to the material from which the boat was made, its state of preservation, onditions of deposition and size, this happened to be the greatest methodological challenge for esearchers working at this interesting site. The boat had been known to archaeologists since the 1960s, but it was only in 2016, thanks to the efforts of the Museum of Polish History, that an action aimed at making this unusual object available to a wide range of visitors began. Both the context of deposition and the artefacts discovered inside the boat seem to unambiguously link the boat with the period of the functioning of the bridge crossings, and thus with the period of the greatest splendour of the Lednica residence.

A brass ring found in the village of Chłapowo stands out among artefacts in the collection of the Archaeological Reserve in Giecz, mostly due to its chronology. It is an example of the so-called black jewellery associated with the period of national mourning preceding the outbreak of the January Uprising. As indicated by the raw material and production method, the ring represents a lowcost mass production, an answer to the then social demand for patriotic jewellery. This paper outlines the istorical context of the ring and the symbolic meaning of its individual elements (cross, anchor, heart, rope).

Contemporary civilizational changes make it necessary to adjust the methods of cultural content transmission to the needs and expectations of today’s recipient. There is a change in the approach to the design of museum structures and their surroundings, as well as to the shaping of spatial forms that create the appropriate framework for exhibitions. This problem also concerns the Museum of the First Piasts at Lednica, which suffers from clear spatial disintegration, illegibility of the composition of the entire system and insufficient use of the landscape potential of this unique place. This paper sets out to present the authors’ own research in this area along with the proposal of architectural, landscape and spatial solutions based on the concept of narrative design.

This paper presents the results of anthropological analyses of bone material produced in the course of archaeological supervision at a construction plot in Łubowo in March 2010. A small rectangular cut was found in situ, containing skeletonised human remains. The deceased was atypically positioned in the grave. ‘Flexed in half’, this was a skeleton of a young woman who had died at the age of Adultus; she was around 24–25 years of age. Using L. Manouvrier’s method, the woman was 158.7 cm tall in life, while the method developed by M. Trotter and G.C. Gleser suggests that she was 160.0 cm in height (Table 3). To conclude, the woman was of medium height.