Poland

Abstract

In Poland, as elsewhere, excavations in the nineteenth century were conducted unsystematically and hastily, with the aim of acquiring interesting finds. Exceptional was Kalikst Jagmin’s dig of 1873 at Łęgonice (central Poland) where a large barrow was sectioned along a W-E axis in order “…to uncover the very base of the mound and to expose a section which, showing the layout and quality of layers, would produce a visible proof of the manner in which this grave-mound was raised” (Jagmin 1876, p. 83). This isolated experiment produced one of the world’s earliest examples of the relatively detailed observation and documentation of stratigraphy (Fig. 35.1). The first excavation manual published in Poland stressed that when digging multilayered mounds, “it is necessary to recognize… the height of every layer above ground level” (Majewski 1902, p. 195). Innovatory was Leon Kozłowski’s method of excavating cemetery in Iwanowice by sequentially opening squares of 10 × 10 m (Kozlowski 1917, p. 2). Careful stratigraphic analysis is testified by multi-strata profiles of a cave site published by Stefan Krukowski (1921, pp. 3–5 and Figs. 3, 4).