Archeologists’ new abilities

Members of a joint Ukrainian-Polish expedition who carried out excavations on Mount Gromyk came back from Wroclaw. The group included nine members: researchers, postgraduates, and students of the Oles Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University. They explored the fortifications of the early Middle Ages, a knight’s castle, and a residence of a Polish magnate together with   their Polish colleagues from Wroclaw University.

“We worked together. There were two or three Ukrainian students and two or three Polish ones per square,” says postgraduate student of historiography department at Donetsk National University Kateryna Mynakova. The expedition examined the remains of an ancient road that led towards the castle, where archaeologists found pieces of pottery, animal bones, and nails. A crossbow bolt head was an interesting find; it had probably been left there after an attack on the fortress.

Everything found by the archaeologists will be further studied and analyzed by experts. A possibility of a starting a museum in Dnipropetrovsk, with the involvement of the Wroclaw Archaeological Museum’s experience, was considered. Next year the archaeologists from both countries plan to work in two directions. The Ukrainian-Polish expedition will conduct excavation in Novobohorodytska Fortress near the mouth of the Samara River, and then the archaeologists will go again to Lower Silesia.

Besides, negotiations with Azerbaijani researchers are going on. It is planned to open one of the Scythian burial mounds located in Dnipropetrovsk oblast. Preliminary agreements were reached last year, when a large collection of Scythian gold was exhibited in Dnipropetrovsk.