Word: biskupin
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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...spring thaws warmed the lakes and streams of northern Poland last week, Professor Zdzislaw Rajewski, director of Warsaw's archaeological museum, gathered students and laborers to resume a fascinating job that started more than 25 years ago: the excavation of Biskupin, a surprising pocket of ancient civilization wondrously preserved for 2,500 years under a Polish lake about 50 miles northeast of Poznan. Hidden beneath the waters are the remains of a thriving agricultural society that lived in the Iron Age, when the Greeks and other civilized Mediterranean peoples considered northern Europe a primeval prowling ground for savages...
What now ranks as one of Europe's greatest archaeological finds was first discovered in 1933 by a local schoolmaster walking his class along a peninsula jutting into Lake Biskupin. Because of recent dredging of the Gasawka River, the lake's level had fallen 10 to 15 feet, and the schoolmaster spotted long rows of logs sticking out of a mud flat at a 45° angle. He reported his discovery, and presently Director Josef Kostrzewski of the Poznan museum came down for a look. Preliminary digging showed that the peninsula had once been an island completely covered...
Clues under the Mud. Every year when the weather permitted, Kostrzewski and his assistant Rajewski assembled teams to probe deeper into the mud for the secrets of Biskupin. Damming the site and pumping it dry, the diggers found that the slanting logs were the outer fringe of fortifications; just inside was a second wall made of three rows of log cribs filled with stones and earth, and enclosing a roughly circular area of about six acres. Except for a small open square, the entire area was packed with log houses, built wall to wall in 13 straight rows and almost...
...upper parts of the village have disappeared, but the parts covered by the water and mud are almost perfectly preserved. More than 5,000,000 artifacts and fragments have been recovered as evidence of Biskupin's flourishing culture in 550 B.C. Life for the 1,200 or so villagers may have been crude by Greece's golden standards, but it was complete and well organized. The village's regular streets and identical houses must have been laid down as deliberately as any modern Levittown. Each house has the same plan, with an outer vestibule for cattle, pigs...
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