On November 9, the exhibition “Gifts for the Valhalla World” opened at the Local History Museum of the city of Vynnyky near Lviv. It features rarities dating back to the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, which archeologists dug up this summer at a gravesite of an ancient Germanic tribe.
Earlier, collectors handed over to the museum parts of swords and tips of spears and told the institution about the location where they had been found. The museum staff contacted researchers of the Department of Archeology at Franko University and decided to carry out an expedition. To tell the truth, it was a secret enterprise, so that illegal excavators would not learn about it and preempt the scholars. They explored locations in the village of Kariv, as well as near Sudova Vyshnia and Novyi Yarychiv.
So, during the expedition, researchers managed to uncover two gravesites in which they discovered unique finds. In particular, the most valuable items include parts of a large red-colored pottery vessel (so-called terra sigillata), glassware, metal products, as well as two large bronze cauldrons.
One of them attracted most attention from archeologists, because it was decorated with three male busts. As it has turned out, this cauldron is the third such find in Europe. The two previous ones were found in the rich princely burials in the Czech Republic (Misov) and Poland (Czarnowko).
“The gravesite we found was in use from the late 1st to the middle of the 2nd century AD and is associated with migrations of the Germanic tribes. The monument is valuable in that it establishes for a fact presence of the tribes which should not have been there. It greatly expands our understanding of history, therefore, our current assumption is that some part of the Suebic tribes crossed the territory of modern western Ukraine,” head of the expedition Yaroslav Onyshchuk told the press.
It should be noted that such finds are very rare. Therefore, scholars from other countries have already expressed an interest in our archeologists’ finds and suggested conducting joint research.
As for the unique rarities on display, they will remain in the collection of the Vynnyky museum.
