Wielbark Culture or Willenberg Culture was an archaeological culture which appeared during the first half of the 1st century AD, and replaced the local Oksywie Culture , a culture which was part of the Przeworsk culture.

Distribution

The Wielbark Culture started out covering the same area as the Oksywie Culture reaching from Gdansk to Chelmno. Later it reached into the Kashubian and Krajenskian lakelands and stretched southwards into the region of Poznan.

In the first half of the 3rd century AD, the Wielbark Culture left settlements by the Baltic Sea, except for the areas adjacent to the Vistula, and expanded into Mazovia and Little Poland on the eastern side of the Vistula reaching into the Ukraine.

Characteristics

Between the Przeworsk Culture and the Wielbark Culture there was a clear separation and there appears to have been no detectable contacts.

The people of the Wielbark Culture used both inhumation and cremation techniques for burying their dead. Whether they used one or the other varied from site to site and it is believed to have depended on family traditions.

A characteristic of this culture, which it had in common with southern Scandinavia, was the raising of stone covered mounds, stone circles, stelae and variations of cobble cladding.

There were no weapons nor tools in the Wielbark culture graves, unlike the Przeworsk culture for which it was typical to give the dead such gifts. Instead, the gifts were mostly ornaments and and costumes. A few graves have shown spurs, and this would be the only warrior attribute found.

Another feature of the Wielbark culture was the use of bronze to make ornaments and accessories. Silver was used seldom and gold rarely. Iron appears to have been used extremely rarely.

The Goths

The Wielbark culture is associated with Jordanes' account of the Goths leaving Scandza (Scandinavia) and their settlement in Gothiscandza. According to Jordanes they pushed away the local Rugians and Vandals when settling in the area.

Gothiscandza was located at the mouth of the Vistula, and this location was given as the land of the Gutones (Pliny the Elder) or Gotones (Tacitus). The names given by Pliny and Tacitus appear to be identical to *Gutoniz, the reconstructed Proto-Germanic form of Gutans, the Goths' name for themselves.

Some have suggested that the three ships of Goths arriving at the Vistula is merely symbolic whereas others have ascribed the ships to the Gepids the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths. A third interpretion is that the ships only contained the Norse clan of Amal's royal family.

However, archaeologists are wary of ascribing ethnicities to archaeological cultures, and it is considered to be an extremely difficult matter.

The latest tendency is to doubt the equation between the Wielbark Culture and the Goths, and it has been established that the Wielbark culture did not appear solely through immigration from Scandinavia. Instead it appears to have evolved from the Oksywie culture and possibly through Scandinavian influence.

This theory is based on the fact that the Wielbark Culture shared the same geographical extent as the Oksywie Culture and even continued to use many of the Oksywie cemetaries. The settlements consisted both of the original inhabitants and of groups of Scandinavians.

The present view is that the direct settlements of Goths in Poland are those characterised by barrow cemetaries by which there are raised stone circles (a Scandinavian burial custom with a concentration in Götaland). This type is found between the Vistula and the Kashubian and Krajenskian lakelands reaching into the Koszalin region. These burial grounds appeared in the second half of the 1st century.

The Wielbark Culture seems to have been a mixed society composed of both Goths and Gepids from Scandinavia as well as the previous inhabitants. In the 3rd century, the Wielbark community left their settlements and reached their new homeland, Oium, in the Ukraine, where they would found a new empire.

Sources

• A Polish Archaeology Article by Tadeusz Makiewicz