A remarkable archaeological discovery has emerged from Poland’s Baltic coast. A unique, highly detailed Hallstatt-era dagger was recovered from a clay deposit that had fallen from a cliff in the wake of a storm. Dated to approximately 2,800 years ago, the discovery provides new evidence of the craftsmanship and cultural exchange of the early Iron Age.
It was found by President of St. Cordula Association for the Rescue of Monuments Jacek Ukowski, when he together with his colleague Katarzyna Herdzik, was conducting an exploration. While using a metal detector along the shoreline in Kamień Pomorski, Ukowski noticed signals near a fallen clay mass and uncovered the dagger within it. In an interview with the Polish Press Agency (PAP), he described it as his most valuable discovery to date. He said: “The cliff had collapsed, and the lump must have fallen from above. I went to the site with a metal detector because I started getting signals.”
The dagger, now housed in the Museum of the History of Kamień Land, measures 24.2 cm in length and has intricate engravings on the entire blade and hilt. Crescentic lines and star-like crosses adorn its surface, with a central decorative band, perhaps a symbol of constellations. Specialists interpret these motifs as an expression of a connection with sun worship, indicating that the dagger may have been used in a ritual and not solely for battle.
Grzegorz Kurka, director of the Museum of the History of Kamień Land, was amazed by the craftsmanship of the artifact. “A true work of art! In terms of workmanship, it is of very high quality, beautifully ornamented. Each engraved element is different. As far as finds in Poland are concerned, I have not come across such a dagger,” he told PAP. The advanced level of metallurgy in the weapon suggests it may have been imported from a southern European workshop.
Additional studies, including metallurgical analysis, will be conducted to determine the composition of the dagger’s alloy, specifically its copper and tin levels. Such examinations can provide insights into its origins and whether it was used as a tool in rituals, battles, or as a status symbol for a high-ranking warrior.
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Earlier, Ukowski discovered a medieval papal bull of Clement VI near Wysoka Kamieńska, an artifact that he also donated to the museum collection.
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The dagger found on the Baltic coast neither corresponds in form nor decoration to other finds from the Early Iron Age known from Polish territory.
This is particularly confirmed by its characteristic, sharply tapering blade, its round cross-section handle, and the decoration consisting of crosses resembling the Maltese cross and incomplete circles.
Even assuming that we are dealing with a unique artefact without analogues in the Vistula River basin, X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis unequivocally excludes its dating to the Early Iron Age.
The materials released by the Museum of the History of Kamień Land do not specify how the object was prepared for analysis or how many measurements were taken.
XRF enables only a shallow penetration into the metal. Without proper cleaning of the surface, especially in the case of copper alloys, the analysis primarily captures the patina — a result of the metal’s interaction with the surrounding environment. Although in such instances the percentage values of the alloy’s main components may differ from the actual ones, their presence remains indisputable.
According to the analysis carried out, the dagger contains approximately 80% copper and 15% zinc, with the remaining 5% consisting of other metals, including lead.
This composition indicates brass — an alloy unknown to communities of the Bronze and Early Iron Ages. At that time, so-called tin bronzes were predominantly used, containing over 80% copper and approximately 8–12% tin.
Unfortunately, we do not have results of chemical composition analyses for other Early Iron Age daggers from Poland.
However, the closest analogy may be a slightly older artefact dated to the Late Bronze Age, found in the Karmin IV hoard in Lower Silesia (Baron et al., 2019, p. 93). This item was made from an alloy containing: copper (Cu) – 91.3%, arsenic (As) – 0.1%, silver (Ag) – 0.1%, tin (Sn) – 7.8%, antimony (Sb) – 0.3%, and lead (Pb) – 0.4%.
Another bronze dagger found in Dargocice (Sych et al. 2018) in Western Pomerania, dated to the transition between the Early and Middle Bronze Age, consisted of copper (Cu): 83.9%, tin (Sn): 14.2%, nickel (Ni): 0.5%, arsenic (As): 0.5%, and antimony (Sb): 0.4%.
Brass did indeed appear in Europe as early as the first millennium BCE, yet until the 1st century BCE these were isolated finds from the Mediterranean basin. It was only later that the Romans began to employ it on a larger scale — initially in coinage, and subsequently in decorative metalwork (Craddock, 1978).
Therefore, it is highly doubtful that the dagger in the collection of the Museum of the History of Kamień Land can be associated with the Early Iron Age in Polish territories.
Interesting finds, of that period
Thanks