Kamil Nowak

Of all historical periods of Europe, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age were the time during which thousands of hoards were found, and the most complex depositional phenomena can be observed in the archaeological record. It is no wonder that the research of these two eras produced fundamental works on the topic of hoards from the point of theory, practice and methodology. The several new results from the past decades indicates to us that we have come to a new turning point in respect to the means of investigating and interpreting this very phenomenon. They are based both on new theoretical proposals, as well as on an increasingly broad range of data, describing the context of the deposition act. Other approaches focus on the elements of hoards, i.e. selected artefacts, which are being studied in some cases literally at 'microscopic' levels. Particularly important are the new methods used in hoards research, which include such diverse procedures as: research on their specificity in the landscape, network analysis of hoarding patterns, metallurgical studies, microscopic analysis of use-wear traces and destruction of metal objects, archaeometric analyses of arti- and ecofact accompanying metals and many others. Their use allows us to broaden the discussions that have been going on for over a hundred years about the reasons for depositing valuables, their importance in prehistoric cultures, and through better understanding of prehistoric communities though Europe. Both the development of archaeology and the significant growth of the number of newly discovered metal artefacts leads one to considerations over the appropriate means for conducting research on these enigmatic finds.
If your research interests are:
- hoards from the Bronze and Iron Ages;
- additionally, by analyzing them, you use a multidisciplinary approach;
- especially if you propose the use of methods that were previously not used in research of hoard finds;
- and/or would like to propose a new theoretical approach to interpretation phenomenon of mass deposition of valuables.
We would like to invite you to participate in our session and we hope that it will be very scientifically inspiring.

After the successful meetings in Hradec Králové (2015) and Nürnberg (2017) we would like to invite you to Wrocław. We invite scholars to present results of their studies on Early Iron Age of Central Europe, with the particular focus on the Hallstatt and La Tène cultural zones.