The site from Lajski: revisiting the issue of links between the Przeworsk culture population and the Eastern European Baltic forestry zone

The paper analyzes burial 3 from the Lajski burial ground located in Eastern Mazovia in central-eastern Poland (Fig. 1). It is attributed to the Przeworsk culture and dated to phase В2/С1 of the Roman period, i. e. around the second half of the 2nd century. The dress of the buried woman includes an element alien to this cultural environment. It is a necklace consisting of glass beads, bronze spirals and a lunula decorated with red and green enamel (Fig. 2: 5-8). Its composition and the reconstructed layout design are typical for the style of the so called barbarian enamels (Fig. 3; 4). The necklace points to a link (or origin) of its wearer with a broadly interpreted community of Baltic cultures in the Eastern European forest zone. Most likely, the woman came from Mazovia inhabited by the Balts of the Bogaczow culture or adjacent regions of Eastern Podlasie and the Belorussian Bug River basin occupied by the population of the late Zarubintsy horizon. The necklace has an imported element, i.e. a chain made from chain mail rings (Fig. 2: 3). Along with distinctive features of the funerary rite and the composition of the funerary offerings, this element indicates that the necklace owner was fully integrated and adapted to the Przeworsk community, i.e. the eastern Germanic peoples identified with the historical union of the Vandalic populations.