The ancient burial, found by chance on a Baltic Sea cliff in the village of Bagicz in Poland’s West Pomerania region, has long intrigued researchers because of its unusually rich grave goods and exceptional preservation.
The woman’s bones and a large wooden log, later identified as a coffin, were discovered after they slid out of a seaside cliff in the late 19th century.
The coffin and its lid were carved from a single tree trunk, a form that archaeologists say is the oldest preserved example of its kind found in Poland.
Alongside the remains, earlier finds included bronze ornaments such as a brooch, bracelets and a necklace of glass beads, as well as a bone pin and a wooden stool.
Fragments of cattle hide and woolen clothing also survived, a rarity for archaeological finds in Poland, where organic materials usually decay.
Because of the burial’s wealth and the belief that it was isolated, the remains became widely known as those of the "Bagicz Princess," a popular label rather than a formal title.
In recent years, researchers from the University of Szczecin and the University of Warsaw returned to the case.
Earlier analysis of the objects in the grave suggested the burial dated to the first half of the 2nd century A.D., but radiocarbon dating of a tooth sample in 2018 indicated the woman may have died no later than around A.D. 30, more than a century earlier than expected.
“We wanted to take another look at these results to check whether we'd made a mistake along the way,” Marta Chmiel-Chrzanowska of the University of Szczecin in the northwest of the country told state news agency PAP.
The team then used dendrochronology, a dating method based on counting and matching tree rings, to analyze the coffin wood.
Researchers extracted a small core from the coffin and compared the pattern of annual growth rings with reference chronologies for the region.
The result aligned closely with the dating suggested by the grave goods, pointing again to around A.D. 120.
Chmiel-Chrzanowska noted that dendrochronology dates the felling of the tree, not the burial itself.
However, based on what is known about the Wielbark culture, a community associated with the southern Baltic region in the early centuries A.D., the researchers concluded the wood was likely used soon after it was cut rather than being stored and seasoned.
The scientists said the earlier radiocarbon discrepancy may have been caused by the “reservoir effect,” which can make remains appear older if a person ate large amounts of fish, especially from waters rich in certain carbon compounds.
New dietary analysis suggests freshwater fish were an important part of the woman’s diet, the researchers said.
The findings were published in the journal Archaeometry by a team from the University of Szczecin, the University of Warsaw, and the AGH University of Kraków.
In the coming months, the researchers plan to analyze the woman’s DNA and attempt a facial reconstruction.
They also believe the burial was likely part of a larger cemetery, and are investigating how the coffin came to be preserved so well, including the possibility that rising water levels centuries later helped protect the organic materials.
The Wielbork culture flourished on the territory of today's Poland from the 1st century to the 5th century, and played an important role in the Amber Road, an ancient trade route for the transfer of amber from coastal areas of the North Sea and the Baltic to the Mediterranean basin.
It is associated with the Goths and related Germanic peoples and with southern Scandinavia.
(rt/gs)
Source: dzieje.pl