Survival at the Frontier of Holy War: Political Expansion, Crusading, Environmental Exploitation and the Medieval Colonizing Settlement at Biała Góra, North Poland

Authors

  • Zbigniew Sawicki Department of Archaeology, Muzeum Zamkowe w Malborku
  • Aleksander Pluskowski University of Reading
  • Alexander Brown University of Reading
  • Monika Badura University of Gdańsk
  • Daniel Makowiecki Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń
  • Lisa-Marie Shillito University of Edinburgh
  • Mirosława Zabilska-Kunek University of Rzeszów
  • Krish Seetah Stanford University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53351/ruhm.v6i12.343

Keywords:

Medieval archaeology, Poland, Pomerania, crusades, Teutonic Order, landscape, environmental archaeology, colonization

Abstract

Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries AD, the Lower Vistula valley represented a permeable and shifting frontier between Pomerelia (eastern Pomerania), which had been incorporated into the Polish Christian state by the end of the tenth century, and the territories of western Prussian tribes, who had resisted attempts at Christianization. Pomeranian colonization eventually began to falter in the latter decades of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, most likely as a result of Prussian incursions, which saw the abandonment of sites across the borderland. Subsequently, the Teutonic Order and its allies led a protracted holy war against the Prussian tribes, which resulted in the conquest of the region and its incorporation into a theocratic state by the end of the thirteenth century. This was accompanied by a second wave of colonization, which resulted in the settlement pattern that is still visible in the landscape of north-central Poland today. However, not all colonies were destroyed or abandoned in between the two phases of colonization. The recently excavated site of Biała Góra, situated on the western side of the Forest of Sztum overlooking the River Nogat, represents a unique example of a transitional settlement that included both Pomeranian and Teutonic Order phases. The aim of this paper is to situate the site within its broader landscape context which can be

characterized as a militarized frontier, where, from the later twelfth century and throughout much of the thirteenth century, political and economic expansion was combined with the ideology of Christian holy war and missionary activity. This paper considers how the colonists provisioned and sustained themselves in comparison to other sites within the region, and how Biała Góra may be tentatively linked to a documented but otherwise lost outpost in this volatile borderland.

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Author Biographies

  • Zbigniew Sawicki, Department of Archaeology, Muzeum Zamkowe w Malborku
    Zbigniew Sawicki is head of the Department of Archaeology at the Castle Museum in Malbork (Muzeum Zamkowe w Malborku) and has directed excavations at Biała Góra from 2007.
  • Aleksander Pluskowski, University of Reading
    Aleksander Pluskowski is a lecturer in Medieval Archaeology at the University of Reading and the director of the Ecology of Crusading project.
  • Alexander Brown, University of Reading
    Alexander Brown is the archaeobotany and principle PDRA of the Ecology of Crusading project at the University of Reading. He specializes in the palynology of wetlands and frontier landscapes.
  • Monika Badura, University of Gdańsk
    Monika Badura is the archaeobotanist working on the plant macro-fossils within the Ecology of Crusading project and has previously worked on plant use in medieval north Polish towns. She teaches at the University of Gdańsk.
  • Daniel Makowiecki, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń
    Daniel Makowiecki is the zooarchaeology PDRA for Prussia on the Ecology of Crusading project and vice director of the Institute of Archaeology at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. He has worked extensively on Polish and international zooarchaeology.
  • Lisa-Marie Shillito, University of Edinburgh
    Lisa-Marie Shillito is a geoarchaeologist working on the Ecology of Crusading project, who specializes in the micromorphology of occupation activities, settlement and waste disposal. She is a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh.
  • Mirosława Zabilska-Kunek, University of Rzeszów
    Mirosława Zabilska-Kunek is a zooarchaeologist working with the fish remains from Prussia within the framework of the Ecology of Crusading project. She is a lecturer at the University of Rzeszów.
  • Krish Seetah, Stanford University
    Krish Seetah is a zooarchaeology PDRA on the Ecology of Crusading project, with a particular focus on technological change associated with animal processing. He is a lecturer at Stanford University, the director of the MACH project and his research interests encompass the bioarchaeology of colonization and colonialism.

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Published

2017-12-30

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 12 (2017): Arquitectura e instituciones militares: política, cultura y sociedad

Section

Dossier

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How to Cite

Survival at the Frontier of Holy War: Political Expansion, Crusading, Environmental Exploitation and the Medieval Colonizing Settlement at Biała Góra, North Poland. (2017). Revista Universitaria De Historia Militar, 6(12), 50-84. https://doi.org/10.53351/ruhm.v6i12.343