The Warszawa-Wilanów “Powsin” cemetery was discovered in the spring of 1990 during a field survey conducted as part of the Archaeological Record of Poland. The abundant pottery found on the surface and the devastation of the site area with hollows and rubbish dumps led to a rescue excavation in the summer of the same year, carried out under the supervision of Maria Kulisiewicz-Kubielas on behalf of The Polish Studios for Conservation of Cultural Property (Fig. 1, 2). During the excavations, which covered an area of 286 m2, twenty-three features related to the functioning of an early Iron Age cemetery were discovered (Fig. 3).

It was not until 2006 when the next discovery was made at the cemetery during archaeological monitoring ahead of a construction work. The site is now completely built over, as confirmed by surface surveys in 2019.

The results of the exploration of the site were not published after the end of the excavations in 1990, and the fate of the documentation taken was unknown. The present study was made possible by the discovery of a folder in the legacy of Maria Kulisiewicz-Kubielas, which contained a report manuscript, field photographs, a description of the artefacts with their inventory numbers, a sketch of the are grid with excavation trenches, a list of features and their contents, scientific notes and illustrations of the artefacts. The documentation did not include drawings, photographs or descriptions of pits and graves. Despite the absence of some of the data, an analysis of the surviving archival documents made it possible to restore 80% of the original information base. The material from the excavations, after several changes in storage locations, is now kept in the collection of the Faculty of Archaeology of the University of Warsaw.

Of the discovered features, one was identified as a quasi-cist grave (Fig. 8, 12), four as cloche graves (Fig. 4, 5), three as urned graves (Fig. 9−11) and six as presumed pit graves. The remaining nine features were deemed to be pits of undetermined function (Fig. 6, 7). The most interesting in terms of funeral rites and grave goods was the quasi-cist feature no. 10. In a rectangular pit measuring 2.2×1.2 m, it contained burnt bones of a man and a woman deposited on a lining of pottery sherds. The remains were accompanied by six accessory vessels, arranged in a row (Fig. 12). Of the nine vessels identified in the feature, four were thin-walled, blackened pots and jars (Pl. II), and the rest were forms with thicker walls, smoothed surface and, exceptionally, with a roughened body (Pl. III). Non-ceramic grave goods consisted of bronze tongs, a bronze crescent-shaped object and an iron pin. An urned grave of a child (feature 18) was dug into the north-eastern corner of the feature under discussion (Fig. 9). Feature 10 exhibits characteristics of funerary rites typical of the Pomeranian culture, including the rectangular shape of the burial pit and the orderly, linear arrangement of the vessels in the grave. Some of the grave goods – thin-walled black pots and jars with low-set bodies – are also characteristic of the culture in question. The elements that deviate from “Pomeranian” patterns include the absence of a stone structure, the deposition of the bones on the pottery-lined bottom of the pit, numerous accessory vessels and the presence of earthenware with traits typical of the Cloche Grave Culture pottery. Therefore, feature 10 displays a “mixed” Pomeranian-Cloche Grave culture character, specific to areas settled by people of the Pomeranian culture in the later phases of its development. The closest analogy to the feature in question is grave 80 from the Brześć Kujawski cemetery, Włocławek County. The cloche and urned burials were deposited in pure sand or in faintly outlined, grey pits. The vessels in the cloche graves were found in a classic arrangement – a cinerary urn filled with bones was covered with a bowl and shielded with a cloche. The urned burials, mostly child graves, were found in the vicinity of the cloche graves and the quasi-cist feature. The pit graves, about which no detailed information is available, contained small numbers of bones.

The archaeological material from the site is dominated by pottery. Of the 34 vessels recovered, 26 were preserved to the extent that allowed them to be classified as per the typology developed by Teresa Węgrzynowicz in 1988. 16 vessels were attributed to the pot subgroup (A1), three were identified as jars (subgroup A2) and seven as bowls (subgroup B1). They were further divided into types (according to the presence or absence of a neck and the finish of the outer surface) and variants (according to the location of the maximum body circumference).

The vessels from Warszawa-Wilanów “Powsin” are counted among forms commonly found at early Iron Age cemeteries in Mazovia and Podlachia. The decorations on two cloches reference ornamentation found on pottery of the Mazovian and Tarnobrzeg-Lusatian Urnfield Culture. Namely, the adornments in question are four holes (three only partially pierced through) under the edge of a pot from feature 1 and a short, notched strip of clay applied on the upper body part of a pot from a grave discovered in 2006.

Metal artefacts were recorded in graves 1, 2, 10 and 18. In features 1 and 2, these were fragments of a bronze wire and an iron wire respectively, probably parts of small decorations. In grave 10, found among the burnt bones of the pair of adults, there were their daily-use objects: an iron pin with a swan neck and looped head, a bronze crescent-shaped object and a pair of bronze tongs (Pl. III/10:1−3). An analogous iron pin found in the urned child burial 18 was probably a special grave gift (Pl. V/18:1). Pin specimens shaped similarly to those uncovered at Powsin (gently bent neck, head facing downward) represent the latest type of pins with swan necks and looped heads, found in the later phases of the Pomeranian-Cloche Grave cultural circle in Mazovia and central Poland (Fig. 13). Like pins with hooked necks and so-called “gullets”, they are dated to the early pre-Roman period (Fig. 14). The only analogies to the bronze crescent-shaped strip are found in graves of the Pomeranian Culture in Lower Silesia. The presence of such objects in women's graves suggests that they were either used to adorn the body (earrings) or were sewn onto clothing to reinforce it at the insertion point of a pin or brooch needle. The bronze tongs have narrow, triangular paddles not separated from the body, which was made from a rod of a semi-circular cross-section and looped at the bend. Formally, they belong to the East Pomeranian type with narrow paddles, distinguished by Marek Gedl. Artefacts analogous to the Powsin specimen are found in large numbers in Greater Poland and rarely in Mazovia and Podlachia. None of the analysed metal artefacts are sensitive chronological markers, but their particular traits and indicated analogies likely attribute them to the Early Pre-Roman Period. The Warszawa-Wilanów “Powsin” cemetery belongs to the third category of “mixed” Pomeranian-Cloche Grave sites distinguished by Mirosława Andrzejowska, where quasi-cist features occur alongside graves characteristic of the Cloche Grave culture. Quasi-cist feature 10 from Powsin was most likely the oldest grave at the cemetery. Its furnishings, especially the iron pins with swan necks and the bronze crescent-shaped strip, which find analogies at other cemeteries from the later phases of the Pomeranian-Cloche Grave cultural circle, prove that the burial in question was probably deposited already in the Early Pre-Roman Period. Feature 15, with grave goods consisting of vessels typical of the latest phase of Cloche Grave Culture cemeteries in Mazovia and Podlachia, is the youngest.

The Powsin cemetery was used by a community whose funeral rite and grave goods exhibit characteristics of three cultural zones, i.e., the “local” Mazovian-Podlachian Cloche Grave culture, the Pomeranian Culture and the Tarnobrzeg-Lusatian Urnfield Culture, which acted as an intermediary to the spread of so-called “eastern elements” in the Polish lands. Similar “mixed” traits are found at the cemeteries at Dziecinów and Warszawa-Grochów “ul. Górników”; thus, they may have functioned at the same time as the Powsin site.

In order to verify the relative chronology of the cemetery, 14C dating of a fragment of a cremated bone from feature 10 was obtained. The 14C date – 2400±30 BP – was within the range of 544−397 BCE after calibration at the 95.4% probability level and within the range of 494−405 BCE at the 68.3% probability level (Fig. 15). The result falls within the boundaries of the LTA and early LTB phases according to Michael Trachsel’s dating corrections. Therefore, the cemetery was in operation in the 5th century BCE.