The Glass Beaker from Bilche-Zolote: On the Chronological and Cultural Attribution of the Find

The paper represents an attempt at a cultural and chronological attribution of the glass vessel found in the vicinity of the village of Bilche-Zolote in Ternopil region. The cup was purchased from local residents by Princess Teresa Sapieha around the turn of the 20th century. Information about the find was first published by V. Demetrykiewicz in 1904. Later, in his list of Roman imports H.-J. Eggers designated the vessel from BilcheZolote as variant b of Eggers type 188; this type also includes finds from Bugno (variant c) and Linowiec (variant a) in the north of today’s Poland. The typological connection between the beakers from Bilche-Zolote and Linowiec was also noted by A. T. Braichevska (Smilenko), who was one of the first researchers to include the find from Ternopil region among the Chernyakhiv artifacts of Roman origin. Given the dating of the Linowiec vessel, she proposed to assign the beaker from Bilche-Zolote to the 3rd century. This cultural attribution remained widely accepted in historiography for several decades. Today, the dating of the vessel from Bilche-Zolote may be seen as one of the main arguments against such an interpretation. Its closest equivalents are beakers of Eggers type 188a. They are mainly known from the Wielbark culture of the lower Vistula, where their presence is localized in the last third of the 2nd and first third of the 3rd centuries. Their origin is obviously connected with the northwestern provinces of the Roman Empire. The period of their circulation in the Barbaricum precedes the formation of the Chernyakhiv culture, which began no earlier than the second third of the 3rd century. Given the localization of the various cultural groups of the period from the last third of the 2nd to first third of the 3rd centuries in the upper Dniester region, we may suppose that the Bilche-Zolote vessel could be contextually connected to the sites of the Przeworsk or Lypytsya cultures in the area. If so, the glass beaker may have reached the upper Dniester via the northern route, through the mediation of the Wielbark and Przeworsk cultures.