Obsidian Trade in Poland Dates Back At Least 20,000 Years

According to a Science in Poland report, obsidian was used for making tools and weapons in what is now Poland at least 20,000 years ago, even though volcanic glass is not known to occur naturally anywhere in the country ('Obsidian Trade in Poland Dates Back At Least 20,000 Years', Archaeology Friday, February 22, 2019)

“People [have] always paid special attention to exotic products and raw materials from distant lands,” said Dagmara H. Werra of the Polish Academy of Sciences. “It must have been similar with shiny obsidian.” During the Paleolithic period, Werra explained, obsidian was probably imported in the form of finished tools from what is now Slovakia [...] analysis of obsidian samples revealed some of them originated as far away as southeastern Turkey. [...] Werra added that few obsidian processing sites have been found in Poland, but there is some evidence that raw obsidian may have been imported during the Neolithic period and fashioned into tools locally.

Cold War Sites Investigated in Poland

(Grzegorz Kiarszys)

According to a Live Science report, archaeologist Grzegorz Kiarszys of Szczecin University has examined declassified CIA satellite images and employed remote sensing techniques to study three Soviet facilities in west-central Poland ('Cold War Sites Investigated in Poland', Archaeology Monday, January 21, 2019). Built in the late 1960s, the buildings were concealed from view, not recorded on maps, and described in Soviet documents as communication centers. Kiarszys’ research, however, suggests the buildings housed military personnel and nuclear warheads. “The power of warheads varied from about 0.5 to 500 kilotons,” he said. “Those warheads were to be used in the so-called Northern Front, for invasion of the northern part of western Germany and Denmark.” Each of the sites consisted of three zones, including a restricted area where warheads were likely kept, a garage area, and housing for Russian troops. Nuclear physicists did not detect any lingering radiation at the sites.