TREASURE OF JUODKRANTĖ

The history of the "Juodkrante treasure" started in the middle of the nineteenth century, a lot of amber was found after some navigation works in Curonian lagoon at Juodkrante. Rumors had been spread about enormous amber resources on the bed of the Curonian lagoon. In 1857 two famous merchants of Klaipeda Wilhem Stantien and Moritz Becker established a company: "Stantien and Becker". They started to constantly excavate the bed of the lagoon in a small fisher's settlement Juodkrante. Sandy mass of the lagoon ground used to be lifted by excavating steam-machines (dredges) and poured in the small ships with sifters. Sand used to be sifted back to the lagoon; wood, black soil pieces and amber would stay in the sifters. This type of excavating (dredging) appeared to be very effective-70 tones of amber were excavated in a year.

What is amber?
Formation
Morphology
Inclusions
Colours
From soil and water
Treatment
Real or not?
Qualities
Amber routes
Archeological finds

Amber in
medicine
Relatives throughout the World
Museum in museum

After some time it turned out that some small amber pieces trimmed by human hand many years ago were excavated together with "normal" amber. For a long time nobody understood the enormous archaeological and scientific value of those finds. At the beginning workers used to sell those pre-historical handicraft articles or just to give them as funny gifts to the visitors of Juodkrante. From that period it was understood that exceptionally valued collection that included very rare amber statuette of a man had been sold to New York. No news had left about the destiny of this collection. Three years after the beginning of amber extraction in Juodkrante it was decided to forbid commerce of scientifically valued amber examples.

The company "Stantien and Becker" invited amber expert Richard Klebs from Konigsberg as a scientific consultant. He became interested in those unique amber handicraft articles and started to collect and systematize them. In 1860-1881years period he succeeded in collecting 434 pre-historical handicraft articles that had been made in the 2-3 millennium BC (the Early Stone Age, Neolithic period).

The main Juodkrante treasure place was a flat shoal in Curonian lagoon stretched 650m to the North from Juodkrante and 2.5km long. The ancient amber handicraft articles were found together with raw amber 2-4 meters deep. There were some suppositions that the treasure had been thrown out in this particular place and left on the ground. The treasure consisted of many tube-shaped beads, brooches, almost rectangular axe-shaped disks and many other amber articles. One of the oldest in Lithuania plastic artifacts-amber statuettes of men and animals dating back to Neolithic Period are exceptionally valued and rare. 200 most interesting amber artifacts were described by R. Klebs in his book "Stone Age Amber Adornments" (illustrated by H. Schwarz) published in 1882.

Literature