Kleczanów Forest
Kleczanów Wood
Kleczanów Wood is a small forest (ca 5 ha) in Kleczanów village, Poland, with 37 mostly Slavic kurgans (burial mounds, barrows) 4-10 meters high (mean value: 7 m). First funerals must had started there at late Stone Age and proceeded in 10th-11th centuary. The wood is surrounded by agricultural fields and it is unique in the whole region. The cemetery was discovered by Polish archeologists in 90ties of the XX c. In pagan times it could be a Slavic sacred wood, (gaj, Proto-Slavic *gajь 'wood, thicket, bush, grove', see: Slavic mythology, sacred grove), a place where people worshipped and used to bury their relatives. Although whole country around that place was transformed into farming land, the Kleczanów Wood survived untouched. For 1.000 years religious community of Kleczanów parish used to celebrate Pentecost feasts and Whitsunday festival there. It is interesting that the spring season, lasting from March to June, was traditionally devoted by Slavs to rebirth ceremonies and communication with dead ancestors (as well as autumn time, conf. Halloween among Germanic people). In early Christian age this pagan habit has contaminated with Catholic feasts.
Andrzej Buko, Archeologia Polski wczesnośredniowiecznej, Warszawa 2006, pp. 129-136 [The Archeology of Early Medieval Poland, Leiden-Boston 2008]
Aleksander Gieysztor, Mitologia Słowian, Warszawa 2006
SEE ALSO
Kleczanów
Slavic Mythology
sacred grove
kurgan
EXTERNAL LINK
[1] (an official website of Prof. Andrzej Buko)
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[[Category: Slavic culture, Slavic mythology, Kurgans]]