Stone altar - Mound - Central place. On the significance and function of the stone structure discovered in Kałdus on the comparative background
The stone structure discovered at the end of the last century, located at the foot of St. Lawrence Mountain, is well known to researchers of early medieval sacred spaces. It is a unique object not only in terms of its form but, above all, in terms of its role in valorising the holy site and its biography. The original natural sacrificial site, in the form of a spring, was transformed into a sacrificial site in the form of a stone altar, on which an annexe of the Romanesque basilica was subsequently built. The final stage was the return to the pre-Christian sacrificial function of the space, the remnant of which is the so-called layer with bones. The paper will show the need to return to the analysis of this unique space with particular emphasis on the phase associated with the functioning of the stone altar. The paper will also show similar constructions from the Western Slavic area and further examples, which can be treated as analogies regarding meaning and functions.
Central Pomeranian strongholds. The land between Bytów and Słupsk - research state, excavation results and research perspectives
Central Pomerania is one of the areas with the most significant number of early medieval strongholds preserved today. This is probably why the area became the focus of an extraordinary research project carried out half a century ago by a team led by Jerzy Olczak and Kazimierz Siuchniński. New surveys of heavily forested areas, using LiDAR data, made it possible to significantly expand the list of sites and verify and clarify some objects' chronology. The paper will present the results of the excavations in the context of the distinctiveness of this part of Pomerania with the leading role of the Słupia River and the Słupsk and Udorpie (Bytów) strongholds located at its edge.
