Abstract

The article addresses a poorly studied issue of the social signifi cance of some pieces of the Prussian warrior’s equipment on the eve of the Teutonic Order invasion in the Baltic Prussia. The comparative analysis of some elements of the military material culture of the inhabitants of the Amber Region makes it possible to draw the following conclusions. In the Merovingian period, Prussian masters creatively modified (rather simplifi ed) Western European elite products, focusing on the needs of the top Prussian warriors. At the end of the Viking Age, in a number of cases, local producers independently created prestigious and socially significant items for the Prussian military nobility. First of all, this refers to bronze spurs covered with silver and imitating gold. In the latter case, the find at the Birka burial site suggests that the Sambians imitated Scandinavian bronze spurs. In the fifth–eleventh centuries, Prussian jewelers and blacksmiths used socially significant products of Western craft smen as models for their elite products, but at the beginning of the Order time, local craftsmen directly copied elements of chivalric equipment. A pair of silver-plated spurs, originating from a ruined fourteenth-century Prussian inhumation and found in the layer of the Alt-Wehlau/Prudnoe burial ground, typologically copies the knight’s spurs. However, the stylized figurines of goats, mythical companions of God Perkuno, presented on these spurs, point to fact that these luxurious objects were commissioned by a Prussian aristocrat who went over to the side of the Teutonic Order and tried to imitate the Order knights in his armor. The same Prussian aristocrats also owned the “chivalric belts” mentioned in Order documents, which denoted the high social status of the emerging stratum of local feudal lords. Found in the inhumations of the Alt-Wehlau/Prudnoye burial ground, such belts were made following the example of the Order belts. However, though the cover plates of the Prussian belts, according to the Order tradition, bear the image of a cross pattée, the buckle shows a stylized image of the above-mentioned goat — the mythical companion of Perkuno. This specifi city of the products of the Prussian masters, which imitate the Order items, does not allow us to say that the set of equipment of the vitings was identical with the knights’ armor.