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discovered, in which not only amulets and ornaments of amber,
but also traces of their workshops have been found. Four thousand years` old workshops
recently excavated in the Żuławy region in
the lower Vistula valley were set up in areas where the abundance of raw material was
supplied by the sea within easy reach. When the nearest surroundings had been exploited,
the workshops were moved along. It is reckoned that some 800 workshops functioned in the
vicinity of Niedżwiedziówka. The reconstruction of a neolithic amber workshop has shown
that raw nodules were cut into halves with a piece of thick thread and a deer-horn edge,
holes were drilled with a flint chisel, and then they were smoothed out and given a final
polish with a, usually Jothnian, sandstone plate and animal fur. The maps of neolithic
amber products excavations show that ornaments made of the “ gold of the north “ were
not exceptional in the times ( ! ). Tacitus must have not been conscious of that when he
claimed in the 2nd century A.D. that only the love of
luxury in the Roman Empire made amber famous. In his time there were amber workshops in
Aquileia, which produced various incomparable ornaments, an effect of at least several
centuries` history of amber working by “barbarian” artists.The traces of
amber workshops from the 2nd and 4th centuries A.D. discovered in
Poland at Jacewo in the Kujawy region and at Świlcza
near Rzeszów, as well as numerous objects found in graves and at other sites testify to a
great demand for amber products in the time of Rome’s splendour. Numerous excavations
show the development of this craft in Poland, to which contacts with Rome contributed.
Amber trade routes are being more and more accurately reconstructed by Polish and Italian
archaeologists. These routes are marked out not only by workshops, but also by treasures
and depots of raw amber and amber artefacts, as well as imported articles and Roman coins
discovered there. Amber depots have been found in Poland at Partynice ( now a suburb of
Wrocław ) and at Basonia in the middle Vistula valley. Apart from raw amber numerous
beads have been found there called Basonian beads. One of the amber expeditions to “ the coasts of ancient Germany “, as it was described by Pliny the Elder in his
Historia Naturalis in the times of Nero, is widely known. The fact that a hundred years earlier Pompey returned with an amber booty from his war against sea pirates is hardly known today. It was noted down by an anonymous chronicler in a 16-century manuscript containing the history of Prussia. His description of Pompey’s expedition is illustrated by a naive drawing of a legendary amber island, which fits Pliny’s description of Pytheas’ expedition. Some 320 years B.C. Pytheas set forth from Massalia ( now Marseilles ) to the north in quest of tin and amber and he reached an island which cannot be precisely located now. The drawing has been put among het chronicle’s descriptions of 13th-century events, which indicates het level of knowledge of medieval scholars. Pliny’s Historia Naturalis was then the basic source of natural sciences.Like the amber island reached by Pytheas, which the Prussian chronicler tried to
picture as faithfully as possible, so a river Eridanus rich in amber has been assiduously
sought for. Myths have it that its waters collected the amber tears of Phaethon’s
sisters who, changed into poplar trees, mourned his death at the hand of Zeus with amber
tears.
Not only archaeologists and historians investigate the secrets of amber origin. One of the greatest and not yet unveiled mysteries of amber is the forest which gave origin to it and the animal world from millions of years ago preserved in amber in the from of perfectly mummified bodies. Owing to the specific structure of amber they have not undergone mineralization. Polymerization processes of resin changing into amber created a skeleton impermeable for mineral solutions. Thanks to it we can now admire insects or other arthropods preserved as if alive in amber. Also their internal organs such as lungs or the spinning glands of a spider, optic cells of an eye or even cell constituents can be isolated.
Insects, arachnids and myriapods are among the arthropods most often encountered in amber. Also some traces of mammals and birds have been preserved, such as animal-hair or feathers. Among the remnants of animals and plants in amber there are families and groups which today occur in subtropical and temperate warm climatic zones. This is also a mystery in the history of amber.
The age of fossil resins, encountered on nearly all continents of the world, is determined by the age of sediments in which they are found. It not always agrees with the real age of amber itself, which as a rule occurs in secondary deposits, far from the trees which yielded resin to create it.
Fossil resin has survived to our times in deposits of greatly differentiated but not accidental shapes. Icicle-like forms made by the dripping liquid resin, are quite frequent. It is in them that small animals and fragments of plants have survived. Also on the outside of tree amber drops found in deposits would form. Smaller and bigger lumps of differing shapes found in deposits may be compared to internal natural moulds, created e.g. by filling up an empty sea-urchin's shell with sediment. When the shell gets broken, the remaining hardened sediment imitates its shape and the relief of its concave walls. If we compare a fissure in a tree to a shell and resin to sediment, each lump of amber may be regarded as an internal natural mould. Its shape and the relief of its surface tells whether it was formed in an under-bark fissure, inside the bark, or in a so-called resin pocket between annual growth rings etc.
Dripping forms of amber – stalactites and icicle-like shapes – are layered and
usually transparent. Sometimes they split to form very thin plates in which enclosed forms
are perfectly visible. The transparency of amber depends on its internal structure. Any
kind of turbidity is caused by air bubbles.
Formation of which remains a secret of amber. Opaque yellow or white amber has a foamy structure. Its colour and degree of transparency depend on the size and position of the bubbles. It has been found that bluish amber contains a network of tiny cracks inside.
The colour of amber is not its constant property. Owing to weathering (oxidation) and temperature it darkens. The outer surface, most exposed to weathering, becomes covered with a network of cracks, which create a brittle layer called the crust. It is often brown, dark red or reddish-brown.
Many species of trees responsible for creating amber were named by the ancients. Pliny called the pine the mother-tree of amber. Which trees were the main source of fossil resins is one of the most important questions asked today not only of botanists. Also other specialists have joined in the research, applying modern of physics and chemistry. We know that Mexican and Dominican amber originated from the resin of the Hymenaea courbaril L., a leguminous species to which our so-called white locust tree belongs. Glessite – one of the fossil resins, which occurs in association with amber (succinite) in the vicinity of Halle, German, owes its origin to a plant Bursera bipinnata, which grows till now. The amber-yielding pine Pinus succinifera (Conw.) Schubert was described as early as the 19th century as the mother-tree of Baltic amber or succinite, the earliest known among fossil resins. The name, common for four species of conifers, today does not satisfy researchers. The search for amber’s mother-tree, best known on the southern beaches of the Baltic and Sambia, continues.
Amber was carried by a river flowing from the north and deposited in its sediments called “blue earth”. The river’s branched out digitate delta, rich in amber, extended as far as the western shores of the Sambian Peninsula and the elevation of the
Łeba near the present Gdańsk. If we relate the myth to the Earth’s Eocene period and call the river Eridanus, the search for it could be finally over. It has been found by drilling in the Chłapowo region that amber seams in the western part of the delta lie deeper than in its eastern part, thus being unfit for exploitation. The eastern, Sambian part, has been exploited by strip mining for only some 100 years. Earlier, amber was obtained with other mining methods.That was but the first stage of amber’s travel through the delta of the Eocene
Eridanus river. A greater part of amber was being moved on and 
on before it was deposited in
successive strata. In het Quarternary period, amber along with the remains of “blue
earth” got into the swift currents of glacial waters. Amid the mass of stony mud it was
transported southwards. This kind of transport from the way amber was carried out of its
mother forest. Its lumps were rounded over and over, hardly able to preserve their
original forms.
Along with the Quarternary sediments, amber travelled far and wide. The map of excavations and old amber mines worked out in 1982 indicates 600 such spots, while in reality there must have been many more. Not all of them have been mentioned in literature. The biggest Quarternary amber deposits accumulated in the Narew river basin, Tuchola forests, Kashubian and Masurian Lake Diacrits.
Most of the mines were established after 1810 on territories leased from the state. The biggest mine near Ostrołęka (the Narew river basin) occupied an area of about 1000 square kilometres. In the best years it yielded up to 100 kilograms of amber daily. The mines were primitive: just shallow pits, sometimes lined with boards. The Narew basin in the Kurpie region had some 60 mines. Most profitable were the years 1835 to 1865. Nowadays there are only two amber master craftsmen in the Kurpie region. They search for amber as well as work it. Besides, the Bursztyny (Amber) Cooperative from Gdańsk has rented the land in the Piasecznica river valley in order to start exploitation. The output is rather small, though.
The last stage of amber travel from a parent tree to the youngest deposits are the beaches of the Baltic and the North Sea. The sea washes up Quarternary and Eocene amber bearing deposits from the bottom and throws them ashore.
Amber found on the beach is popularly called “bare”, which means that the lumps are not covered with a weathered layer. Water preserves them and waves polish their surface. Amber is also mined on old, now buried beaches. For many years now Holocene beaches in Gdańsk-Stogi in Poland have been exploited. Amber is found there at the depth of 12 metres. The raw material is extracted with the hydraulic method, i.e. by forcing water under pressure and washing out fine-grained sands along with amber. During storms amber is fished for directly in the sea.
Baltic amber is a fossil resin, however not the only one that has survived to our days. In the course of years, about 60 varieties of resin more or less resembling amber have been found deposited in nearly all continents of the world. They differ in their physical and chemical properties.
The Sambian deposits, apart from succinite, contain about there per cent of such fossil resins as gedanite, stantienite, beckerite and glessite. Succinite, best known from the Sambian deposits,occurs also in the Ukraine region and in Bitterfeld near Halle.
To the oldest fossil resin, included to copals, belong Triassic resins 225 to 230
million years ago discovered in Austria. Among Cretaceous and Tertiary resins are
schraufite, rosthornite, keflachite, plaffeite, allingite, walchowite, simetite, ajkaite,
burmite, rumanite, cedarite, as well as
Dominican and Mexican ambers and others. All these may be classified into
compact resins (succinite group) and brittle resins (retinite group), which differ, among
others, in the amount of succinic acid they contain.
Amber handicraft, initially only for the privileged, reached the peak of its development in the 16
th and 17th century workshops in Gdańsk and Konigsberg. It attracted the interest of kings and princes. A medallion with King Stephen Bathory’s image has been found in Anna Jagiellonka’s sarcophagus. An amber cup with Sigismund III’s image is still kept at the Wawel Castle in Cracow. In the 17th century, an amber casket, a mirror with an amber frame, a ewer and a bowl of white amber were carried to the sultan’s court in Turkey. Necklaces, mugs, epergnes, statuettes, table silver set in amber, boxes, candlesticks, altars, reliquaries and cabinets can still be admired. They astound with their opulent ornamentation, as well as the innumerable varieties of the amber used in them.Gda
ńsk and Konigsberg, both situated in het areas most abundant in amber deposits, were the centres of amber craft, although guilds of amber ornament manufacturers existed in Bruges, Lubeck, Słupsk and Elbląg as early as the 15th century. In 1533 Paul Jeske became a raw amber supplier in Gdańsk. His family held the right to sell amber until the 17th century.The last magnificent achievement of artistic amber craft in the Renaissance and the Baroque was the amber chamber made in het early 18th century.
At the time burghers became interested in amber articles, which required increased mass production. In the 19th century factories replaced craftsmen’s workshops. Both natural and... pressed amber was worked there.
It was not tantamount to a loss of interest in the glamour of this sunny mineral. Folk art became a continuation of old amber-working traditions, even those revealed by archaeological excavations. It developed mostly in the Kurpie region, where the raw material was easily available.
A legend about the origin of amber has survived in the Kurpie region, which has something in common with... the Greek myth on phaeton’s sisters shedding amber tears. Kurpians believe that when God had sent the flood to destroy the sinful mankind, when it had been raining for forty days and nights, people wept of despair. Their tears fell into the rising waters and changed into amber. Amber as clear as crystal was made of innocent people’s tears, darkened and opaque – of sinner’s tears, and impure, useless one – of the tears of evil men and drunkards.
In this area, rich in amber-working traditions, also a vast number of folk names were coined, connected with varieties, use and extraction of raw amber. Necklaces are among the most beautiful of variety of amber objects made in Kurpie. The most typical for that region is a necklace with a medal. The pendant medal is adorned with a figure of Christ crucified or with just a cross. A unique amber ornament is the so-called “spider”, hanging from the ceiling in rich cottages. Faith in the healing powers of amber, of which neolithic man had already made his talismans, has revived under thatched cottage roofs.
The contemporary artistic production of amber as het basic material was started in Poland in the 1960s. Whether this art. has already achieved its peak and whether it has managed to work out any individual style in the age of space travel, will be judged by our descendants. Certainly, the charm of amber does not fade away. This charm results not only from its beauty but also from its history – very rich and very remote, but ever more close to us. Even its legends and its magic seem to us our very own.
