In 2015, two unique Roman glass vessels were discovered in Czarnówko, East Pomerania. The site – a large cemetery of more than 2,000 graves from the Late Pre-Roman Period and the Roman Period – is located on a fluvial terrace of the Łeba River near Lębork, about 25 km from the current Baltic Sea coast (Fig. 1).

In addition to averagely or poorly furnished cremation and inhumation graves, the site yielded several Wielbark culture features, which can be described as “princely” due to their rich grave goods. One of them is feature 1793 – a grave with an inhumation burial placed in a log coffin. The feature was located directly under a building whose concrete bedplate covered and, ironically, protected the grave itself, even though the uppermost layers of its fill were proba-bly destroyed during construction works. The preserved top level of the grave was uncovered at a depth of about 40−50 cm below the present-day ground level. Oriented along the N-S axis, the burial pit was disturbed by an ancient secondary cut, which almost completely destroyed its central and southern parts. Pottery fragments, a copper-alloy brooch, several glass and amber beads, a clay spindle whorl and a copper-alloy needle/pin fragment, as well as a small cluster of cremated human bones (possibly female) were found in the cut; at the bottom of the pit, a three-layer antler comb and another spindle whorl lay on the edge of a log coffin. The cut was piled with three large boulders and a dozen smaller stones, which may have originally been located in the upper layers of the fill of the grave pit proper (Fig. 2:A–C).

The two glass vessels – the footed beaker and the fish-shaped bottle – were uncovered in the intact northern part of the grave pit. Two hand-made clay ves-sels were standing nearby, while a silver brooch and several glass and amber beads were lying to the South. Fragments of tooth enamel discovered in situ indicate that the body was oriented with its head to the north (Fig. 2:D).

The vessels from feature 1793 are exceptional finds, not only because of their quality and the rarity of similar wares, but also due to the fact that they are the first vessels of their type discovered in central and northern European Barbaricum.

The footed glass beaker of Isings type 86 (Fig. 3) was made using the free-blowing technique. The colourless, originally transparent, glass has hazed as a re-sult of chemical soil processes. The edge is everted, and the nearly cylindrical body tapers downward. The body of the vessel is encircled under the rim by a thread of semi-transparent blue glass. The main decoration is a frieze of six white (opaque) and six blue (semi-transparent) applications in the shape of water birds, made of flattened glass pieces arranged in diagonal rows (blue and white by turns). The birds were flattened using a tool with chequered surface. Under the frieze, there is a row of four ornaments – three blue and one white – of wavy thread. The vessel measures 22.4 cm in height, 9.0 cm in rim diameter and 7.3 cm in foot diameter; it has a capacity of about 1.0−1.1 l.

The second vessel is a fish-shaped bottle of Isings type 95a (Fig. 4), also made using the free-blowing technique. The glass is light green, translucent, with lines of small air bubbles here and there. The tail of the fish, made by flattening the glass with tongs or a similar tool, is slightly curved upward. Slight primary chipping of the glass near the hole in the round fish mouth is, aside from the missing tip of the fifth tooth of the dorsal fin, the only damage sustained by the vessel. White wavy threads of opaque glass (three on the left, four on the right) represent gills. The same glass was used to make the long dorsal fin and small pectoral, ventral and anal fins, while the eyes in the form of hemispherical knobs were shaped from spirally mixed transparent blue glass and opaque red glass. The length of the vessel is 22.3 cm, the greatest width is 5.8 cm, the height (without fins) is 6.7 cm. The artefact weighs 129 g and has a capacity of about 225 ml.

Both vessels are decorated with overlayed glass threads, which attributes them to the large group of so-called snake-thread glass (Germ. Schlangenfadengläser). In Poland, this group is most often represented by cups of Eggers type 189. It is assumed that the technique of snake-thread decoration originated in the East, from where it was borrowed in the late 2nd or early 3rd century CE by glassmakers operating in the West. Snake-thread glass vessels from the (south-)eastern Mediterranean region are usually colourless or greenish, with applied elements of the same colour as the base glass. The second group of snake-thread glasses comes from the province of Germania inferior, where they evolved from colourless vessels decorated with likewise colourless threads to colourless vessels adorned with coloured threads; the threads were often notched. The third group of snake-thread vessels consists of glasses from Pannonia (Fig. 13). The base glass and applied decorations of vessels from this group are often colourless or greenish, however, blue and white threads can also occur. Finds from Pannonia are mainly dated to the first half of the 3rd century CE.

It is this last group that yields the best counterparts of the depictions of birds on the Czarnówko beaker, which belongs to the so-called flower and bird group (Fig. 8). Likewise, the chequerboard-shaped imprint visible on the vessel in question is considered to be one of the characteristic features of Pannonian glassware of the flower and bird group. Fragments of glass with colourless birds with imprints of the so-called honeycomb pattern are known from Carnun-tum (Petronell-Carnuntum, Austria); fragments of light green and white glass, in one case with a blue bird (all with a honeycomb motif), come from Intercisa (Dunaújváros, Hungary), and a fragment of colourless glass with an opaque blue bird with a flat surface was found in Brigetio (Komárom-Szőny, Hungary). Nota bene, beakers are in fact the only Pannonian vessels featuring depictions of birds. Finally, decoration of blue threads, such as the one on the lower frieze of the Czarnówko beaker, is also known from Pannonia. Thus, we can assume that this vessel is most likely of Pannonian provenance.

The bottle described above is one of the best-preserved fish-shaped vessels in the world. Similar bottles, varying in shape and detail, are scattered through-out the Roman Empire, but only one is more or less accurately dated (from the cemetery by Luxemburger Straße in Cologne, grave 60), although the closed nature of that assemblage is not at all certain. Two more vessels of the same type come from Cologne. Unlike the Czarnówko fish, however, the Cologne ves-sels were made in such a way that they could stand on their own (Fig. 11). It is assumed that they are perfume bottles, and most likely this was also the original function of the Czarnówko vessel. With the Cologne “fish” as its closest stylistic counterparts, the artefact in question was most likely also made in the province of Germania inferior, in or around Cologne.

Judging by the size of the marks left by the log coffin, the location of the tooth fragments, the composition of the grave goods, and the identification of the cremated bones from the fill of the burial pit as most likely female, we can conclude that a girl or young woman of high social status was buried in the Czar-nówko grave. An analysis of the grave contents, the two brooches in particular, makes it possible to precisely date the burial and thus the two glass vessels. The silver brooch, decorated with gilded silver foil and silver beaded wire, has a knee-shaped bow, a prominent crest on the head and a high catch-plate (Fig. 6:6). It corresponds to Almgren type 132, although, due to its unique nature, this jewellery piece does not find direct morphological analogies. Nevertheless, sever-al similarly richly decorated brooches of this type, made of copper alloys or, less frequently, silver and iron, are known from the Wielbark Culture area (Fig. 12). They all come from assemblages from phase B2/C1−C1a. The second brooch is a “plain” copper-alloy fibula with a high catch-plate, most resembling Almgren types 193 and 202 (Fig. 6:7). Similar brooches are also commonly found in the Wielbark Culture area during phase B2/C1−C1a. The miniature beads of opaque orange glass of type TM53, tubular beads of transparent colourless glass with spiral threads of opaque white and red glass of type TM304z, mosaic beads of type TM366, tubular beads with a hexagonal cross-section of opaque blue glass of type Lind 16 and, possibly, large spherical beads of transparent green glass of type TM13 (Fig. 7:8) should also be dated to the phase in question at the earliest. Finally, the three-layer antler comb (Fig. 7:9) is, by definition, of “purely” late Roman provenance. The remaining artefacts have features of either poor chronological value (glass and amber beads of type TM 182, biconi-cal beads of type TM IV, barrel-shaped amber beads of type TM392, clay bowls of type XbA, beakers of type XIIIB, small vases of type XIV; Fig. 5, 7:8) or no such value at all (copper-alloy needle/pin, spindle whorls; Fig. 7:10.11).Therefore, we ultimately believe that the burial from Czarnówko feature 1793 can be confidently dated to stage C1a of the Late Roman Period, i.e., the last two decades of the 2nd century or the very beginning of the 3rd century CE. The few similarly dated stately graves discovered in the Baltic Sea basin, especially in Pomerania, seem to be a reflection of the events of the Marcomanni wars and the period immediately after them. As a result of these happenings, the political topography of Germania magna underwent a decisive transfor-mation, with the rise of new centres of wealth and power, changes to the settlement structure, expansion of supra-regional elite communication networks and emergence of new supra-tribal coalitions. Among others, these new conditions benefited the communities of northern Central Europe and southern Scandi-navia, as reflected in the increased influx of Roman imports to these areas. The items often arrived from the provinces along the Middle Danube River. At the same time, older contacts, such as with the Rhineland, remained intact. Both these directions of contact seem to find their individual expression in the glass vessels from feature 1793 at Czarnówko, East Pomerania.