Biskupin: The Polish Pompeii
For 2,700 years, the remains of the ancient settlement of Biskupin remained hidden under water and damp ground. Remarkably well preserved, they were discovered in the 1930s by a school teacher and quickly became a sensation, drawing attention both from Polish and, unfortunately, also Nazi German archaeologists. Today Biskupin is seen as an absolutely unique site, one that offers a one-of-a-kind look at life at the turn of the Bronze and Iron Ages.
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A view of Lake Biskupin and the Biskupin townlet, photo: Wieslaw M. Zielinski / East News
In the quaint village of Biskupin in central Poland lies what is considered the country’s most significant archaeological site. Called simply Biskupin, it contains the remains of an impressive wooden settlement dating back to the 8th century BCE.
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Biskupin is a place that’s most probably known by every Pole, it provokes many associations and is a part of our modern cultural identity. It functions in everyday language as a synonym of something from the legendary past, a certain pre-beginning.
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From ‘Archeologia w Biskupinie 1934–1974’, a 2020 publication of the Archaeological Museum in Biskupin, trans. MK
The 2-hectare settlement was originally built on a peninsula on the southern shore of the modestly-sized Lake Biskupin. But at a certain point, the lake’s surface rose causing much of the ancient townlet to be covered with water and damp ground. What was left of Biskupin was hidden for approximately 2,700 years, preserved thanks to how the dampness conserved the wooden elements. Due to its outstanding level of preservation, Biskupin is often called the Polish Pompeii.
In 1932, the small river Gąsawka flowing out of Lake Biskupin was being deepened as part of irrigation plans. It resulted in the lake’s water level dropping, leaving peculiar wooden objects sticking out of the lake and drawing locals’ attention.
The headmaster & the professor
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An archeological expedition in Rzucewo, professor Józef Kostrzewski is standing in the middle, photo: audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)
The story goes that children pasturing cows on a meadow by the lake noticed sharpened wooden poles protruding from the water. They told Walenty Szwajcer, their teacher at the local school. Szwajcer examined the find and immediately understood that it carried archaeological significance. Originally, he was under the impression that the poles were the remains of the roofs of flooded houses.
Szwajcer decided to write a letter about the curious find to Józef Kostrzewski, an eminent archaeologist and professor at Poznań University. Kostrzewski must have taken Szwajcer’s message rather seriously because he came to Biskupin on 18th October 1933, just a few days after receiving the letter.
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In the autumn of 1933, Walenty Szwajcer, the headmaster of the public school in Biskupin near Gąsawa […], informed me that he had discovered roofs from flooded houses on Lake Biskupin’s peninsula. Upon arriving at the spot, I concluded that these were, of course, not flooded houses but poles stuck obliquely into the lake’s bed in order to reinforce the shoreline, or a breakwater.
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From ‘Z Mego Życia: Pamiętnik’, the 1970 memoir by Józef Kostrzewski , trans. MK
Kostrzewski realised that the site contained the remains of an ancient settlement and estimated that it existed between 700 and 400 BCE. He attributed its creation to Lusatian culture, a vast group of urnified cultures (ones that placed the ashes of their cremated dead in urns) that lived between 1300 and 500 BCE across today’s Poland, Czechia, eastern Germany and western Ukraine. Kostrzewski sensed that the remains on Lake Biskupin’s peninsula were a unique find and decided to conduct proper archaeological research.
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Poland’s president Ignacy Mościcki and professor Józef Kostrzewski taking a look at the Biskupin excavations, 1936, photo: audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)
The first excavations at Biskupin took place in the summer of 1934 and were a modest undertaking. The archaeological expedition to the site was underfunded and consisted of only eight people – Professor Kostrzewski, his assistant Zdzisław Rajewski, and a group of young archaeologists. The team lived in three tents set up on the peninsula and hired 35 workers from the local community to help with the digging. During the first excavation season, the expedition managed to uncover 480 square metres of the ancient settlement.
Kostrzewski and Rajewski were quite skilled at popularising their Biskupin project in the press and the publicity they received helped them get more funding. By 1935, they had the means to substantially expand their operations. That year the expedition included 18 scientific and technical employees and was aided by about 70 workers. The excavations extended over an area of more or less 2,500 square metres.
By the end of the 1935 excavation season, the team had discovered well-preserved floors of houses, streets running between those houses, as well as remains of a breakwater, an oval rampart and a circular street running along the rampart’s inner side. Also they also found various artefacts like ceramic bowls, bronze pins and antler arrowheads. It became clear that Biskupin was a well-organised ancient settlement; nothing quite like it had ever been found on Polish soil before. Thanks to the aforementioned press publicity, the Polish public became greatly interested in Biskupin. But the site attracted attention not only due to its archaeological significance – Biskupin began to play a prominent political role.
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Poland’s president Ignacy Mościcki, in the right edge of the image, and professor Kostrzewski, second from the right, during a tour of Biskupin, 1936, photo: audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)
A narrative was created, backed by Kostrzewski, that Biskupin was a proto-Slavic settlement. This was used to counter the 1930s Nazi propaganda that certain territories of Interwar Poland (including Biskupin) should be taken over by Germany because they were inhabited by Germanic tribes in ancient times. Biskupin’s purported Slavic provenance could be used to disprove this Nazi claim.
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The political situation of the mid-1930s elevated the idea that Lusatian culture was a proto-Slavic one to the level of a national myth and the ancient settlement in Biskupin uncovered in the years 1934-1939 became a flashy illustration of that myth.
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From ‘Archeologia w Biskupinie 1934–1974’, trans. MK
It’s worth mentioning here that, according to modern archaeology, we simply cannot determine what the actually ethnicity of the Lusatian people inhabiting Biskupin was. They certainly weren’t Germanic as Germanic peoples weren’t present in the Biskupin area at the time of the settlement’s creation. But they weren’t Slavic either, since Slavic peoples only arrived in today’s Poland around the 5th century CE.
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A bird’s eye view of the Biskupin excavations, 1936, photo: audiovis.nac.gov.pl
The political import of Biskupin meant that the archaeological mission to the site could count on special treatment. In 1936, the excavations were visited by Poland’s president Ignacy Mościcki and a year later by Marshal Edward Śmigły-Rydz, commander-in-chief of the Polish Army.
Kostrzewski’s expedition was granted additional funds and a sizeable base was built to accommodate his team at the site. The professor was also able to obtain help from divers from the Polish Navy:
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Underwater research of Lake Biskupin’s bed was arranged for; it was conducted by divers from the Polish navy. They faced difficult conditions as the clarity of the water was severely limited and there was a thick layer of silt covering the bed. Despite that, a number of wooden constructions were located, many antler and bone objects as well as fragments of ceramic vessels were found.
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From biskupin.pl, trans. MK
Even the Military Balloon Workshop based in the town of Legionowo chipped in. They created a special balloon approximately 3.5 metres in diameter that was equipped with a suspended photographic camera with a self-timer. The balloon was used to take amazing aerial pictures of the site.
A decision was made to reconstruct certain elements of Biskupin on the peninsula. The reconstructions were carefully designed in collaboration with ethnographers and architects to be as plausible as possible, and by 1937 they included two huts, a replica of the circular street and fragments of the rampart and breakwater. The recreated architecture of Biskupin and its unearthed remains attracted thousands of tourists. All in all, in the years 1934-1939, archaeologists researched almost a thousand square metres of the ancient settlement.
World War II interrupted the work of the Polish mission at the site – western Poland, including Biskupin, was occupied by Nazi Germany. Due to his denial of the Nazi theory about the Germanic pre-history of Polish lands, Professor Kostrzewski was wanted by the Gestapo; he had to go into hiding. Hoping to prove that it really was an ancient Germanic site, the Nazis sent their own archaeological expedition to Biskupin. Unsurprisingly, their research didn’t provide the expected results. It ended in 1943 with the frustrated Nazis covering the many years of excavations with sand and earth. By the end of the war, the Biskupin reconstructions were also destroyed, as well as the base of the Polish expedition.
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Zdzisław Rajewski in a light shirt and Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły, second from the left, touring Biskupin, 1937, photo: audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)
After the dust had cleared from the war, Polish archaeologists returned to Biskupin and work resumed under the supervision of Professor Kostrzewski, who had managed to survive the conflict. Over the rest of the 1940s, the remains of Biskupin were unearthed again and further excavations were made. The pre-war reconstructions of the ancient settlement were also rebuilt. Having cleaned up the mess left by the Germans, Kostrzewski retired in 1950, after which Rajewski took control of the site.
Attempts were made to preserve the uncovered wooden remains but despite many efforts they were deteriorating due to exposure to the dry and airy environment. Drastic action was called for, and in the 1960s, two sections of the pre-war excavations in the northern part of the peninsula were intentionally flooded with water. Eventually, most of the original unearthed elements of Biskupin were covered with ground so that they wouldn’t disintegrate. However, before that happened, about 75 percent of the site was researched. Thanks to this, as well as Biskupin’s remarkable level of preservation, the site is among the most unique places in European archaeology:
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Obviously, in that era, at the turn of the Bronze and Iron Ages or between the 8th and 6th century BCE, there were tens of fortified Biskupin-type settlements in today’s Greater Poland region and in parts of former East Germany. But only Biskupin has been researched – by the way, only 75 percent of it – and as of now there is no other archaeological site of a similar character that archaeologists would’ve examined so well.
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From ‘Odkrycie Biskupina’, an interview with Wojciech Piotrowski of the Archaeological Museum in Biskupin at muzhp.pl, trans. MK
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The recreated constructions of Biskupin, photo: Dawid Lasocinski / Forum
So what did all the archaeological research at Biskupin manage to establish? Thanks to dendrochronological analysis we know that the townlet was built mainly between the years 747-727 BCE. We also know that its creators were part of Lusatian culture. So it turned out Kostrzewski’s initial assessment of the site was pretty accurate.
Biskupin had an ellipsoidal shape and took up the entire surface of the peninsula – the settlement was approximately 200-metres long and 100-metres wide. It was surrounded by a 470-metre-long rampart built from wooden crates filled with earth and sand. The rampart reached up to six metres in height and three metres in width. The only gate to the settlement was in the south-western section of the rampart. From the outside, this gate was accessible via a bridge. The parts of the settlement facing the lake were protected by a breakwater.
Within the rampart were 12 parallel streets lined with rows of huts built from wooden logs. There were 105 of these huts and many had shared gable walls and roof constructions. Each hut had an approximately 80-square-metre interior consisting of a vestibule, main room, a large bed and a floor fireplace (the layout was always the same). The bed was used by an entire family, which consisted of up to about ten people. All the streets were paved with logs and connected to the circular street leading along the inside of the rampart.
Interestingly, the society of Biskupin was an egalitarian one:
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Biskupin is an example of a lack of social differences. Not a single hut was grander than the other ones, there was no temple, in the interiors no artefacts were found suggesting that a particular hut was inhabited by a chieftain, ruler or tribal leader who was more affluent than his or her fellow inhabitants.
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From ‘Odkrycie Biskupina’, trans. MK
The community of Biskupin counted about a thousand people. Its members farmed and hunted in the lands near the lake and their fortified settlement granted them protection and shelter. At a certain point (we don’t know exactly when), due to climate change, the waters of the lake rose and flooded the townlet making life there unbearable. The inhabitants of Biskupin were forced to abandon their lakeside home. All of Biskupin’s elements that remained above the water quickly disintegrated, but those parts that were flooded and later covered with moist ground were conserved by the dampness.
Hunter-gatherers & Neolithic farmers
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Biskupin’s rampart and gate, photo: Tytus Żmijewski / PAP
Today Biskupin is part of an archaeological reserve overlooked by the Archaeological Museum in Biskupin and has the status of a historical monument. You can find reconstructions on the peninsula of the ancient settlement’s architecture, which were built in the 1970s and revamped in the 2000s. These include the bridge and breakwater, parts of the rampart, two rows of huts and a street running between them.
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In the huts, furnishing and equipment characteristic of the turn of the Bronze and Iron Ages is exhibited. In the tourist season, you can meet performers here, clad in attire referencing the realities of those times, who talk about how life looked approximately 2,700 years ago. Some of the huts have been adapted for themed museum lessons.
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From biskupin.pl, trans. MK
Biskupin is immensely popular with tourists – it’s visited by about a quarter of a million people every year (in normal non-pandemic times). Near the peninsula is a museum pavilion housing an exhibition describing the history of Biskupin and presenting artefacts discovered at the ancient townlet. Quite curiously, other interesting archaeological sites have been found near to Biskupin and these can also be visited at the reserve. They include a prehistoric hunter-gatherer camp, a Neolithic farming village and an early mediaeval settlement. Altogether, even for those with only a passing interest in history and archaeology, Biskupin is definitely a fascinating and eye-opening place to visit!
Written by Marek Kępa, Mar 2021
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