The West Balt Circle Riders

Spurs and their Role in the Bogaczewo and Sudovian Cultures

Kontny, Bartosz

The spurs of horse riders have long been acknowledged as an important item of grave furniture in the Late Roman and Migration period burials of Poland, a reflection of the high social position held by the deceased. Yet while spurs have been studied at a general level, and typo-chronological studies have been conducted on spurs found in southern and central Poland, no such research has so far been conducted on finds from the West Balt Circle, in north-eastern Poland. This volume is an attempt to rectify the situation by offering a thorough examination of finds attributed to the Bogaczewo and Sudovian Cultures. The author here offers a comprehensive assessment of surviving materials from the period, many of which are scattered through museums across Europe, together with an in-depth analysis of archival sources (included among them the private inventories of archaeologists working in the pre-war period) in order to reconstruct our understanding of the furnishings and data relating to spurs. This detailed research, carefully contextualized against our wider understanding of Barbarian Europe, offers an important new reference for our understanding both of the West Balt Circle and its inter-cultural relations with surrounding regions, as well as of the symbolic meaning of spurs and their significance in burial rites.