Pages: 289-300

Owing to a kind assistance of Mr. Barry Ager, curator, Continental Early Medieval Collection, Department of Prehistory and Europe (British Museum, London), I was able to familiarize myself with a group of finds associated with former Imperial province of Eastern Prussia, which are currently stocked in the British Museum. They arrived there in 1868 after the death of doctor of philosophy Gustav Klemm, well-known collector of antiquities and their popularizer. He gathered his collection in various German lands, including in East Prussia. The chronological range of the finds in G. Klemm's collection is wide and covers the interval of time spanning from Stone Age to the end of early Middle Ages. All of them were initially published in London in 2001 (Orlińska 2001).
The inventory logs of the museum mention “Insterburg near Tilsit” as the place of origin of Prussian finds from G. Klemm’s collection. The finds are represented by 16 objects, of which particularly interesting are two bronze fibulae — №№ 4677 and 4687, and two bracelets №№ 4678 and 4679. They, as well as majority of other finds in the Prussian part of G. Klemm's collection, are associated with Insterburg / Chernyakhovsk (Kaliningrad region, Russia) in the museum inventory log. Analysis of all these finds revealed that they are basically connected with antiquities of lower reaches of the river Neman. The same is true about a part of Insterburg Antiquities Society's museum collection, which is explained by little studies conducted in eastern provinces of Prussia in XIX century. Many finds were delivered here from the lower reaches of the river Neman, which served as a source of antiquities.

Keywords: British Museum, Eastern Prussia, bronze fibulae, bracelets

Information about author:

Vladimir Kulakov (Moscow, Russia). Doctor of historical sciences. Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
E-mail: [email protected]