Poland

The city Kalisz derives its name from a mention by Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD of the ancient Kalisii. It is known as one of the oldest Polish cities. It is believed that the first Polish rulers, the Piast dynasty had their cradle.

Before WWII, Kaliningrad was the capital of Prussia and was referred to as Königsberg. In 1909, at the initiative of the provincial Conservator of Historical Monuments Richard Dethlefsen an open-air museum was founded in the North-Eastern part of the Königsberger Zoo in Hufen just outside the city centre, called the Ostpreußisches Heimatmuseum.

The Świętokrzyskie (or Holy Cross) Mountains have been famous for their flint mines of chocolate flint and banded flint since Neolithic times. It was in the 1920s, scientists realised that Krzemionki was the origin with many prehistoric mines still preserved, one of the largest complexes of its kind in Europe.

Salt has been extracted in and around Bochnia already since the Neolithic Lengyel Culture but more intensively since the 11th century. It is the same “salt field” which runs under Wieliczka. Water from wells (brine water) was raised to the surface and boiled in metal containers. When due to increasing demand, the ground water level sank, the wells needed to be dug deeper and as ac consequence, one reached to salt layers and dug up salt since about 1248 AD.

Under supervision of the Institute of Archaeology at the Jagiellonian University and the Department of Metallurgy & Metal Engineering at the AGH University of Science and Technology, both situated in Kraków, the Dziejba Society (Stowarzyszenie Dziejba) is running a settlement the way it could have been like in the Bronze Age.