In the 14th century, the Teutonic Order and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania engaged in severe armed conflicts whose central element was raids on enemy territory. Since nearly all written evidence was authored by one side in the conflict, the chroniclers of the Order, the reliability of the reports in respect to violence and cruelties is not clear. Therefore, archaeological discoveries are of great importance for understanding these wars and their reality. An instructive example is the deserted town of Alt-Wartenburg in Warmia (Barczewko near Olsztyn, Northeast Poland), which was captured and destroyed in 1354 by a Lithuanian army and afterwards abandoned. Recent research has revealed considerable traces of the town’s violent end: burnt houses, weapons, skeletons of the victims, and other traces of ravages and violence. The site and the finds are discussed against the background of the written record, the warfare of its time and region, and other archaeological witnesses of this period. Keywords: Wars of Teutonic Order and Grand Duchy of Lithuania; conflict archaeology; Middle Ages; deserted town; Warmia.

Barczewko is located near Olsztyn, in the Warmian-Masurian province (north-eastern Poland). The site on Lake Wadąg was the place of the first location of today’s Barczewo (Ger. Wartenburg). Urban settlement with the castle/watchtower was erectedon the initiative of the bishop of Warmia at the end of the 1320s. The development of the young urban colony was interrupted in 1354 when it was invaded by Lithuanian troops, burned down and abandoned. The village that was later established nearbywas called Alt Wartenberg. The hill behind the village, referred to as the Old Town, has never been built on. The place is a specific time capsule, preserving the remains of buildings and the basic elements of the town’s spatial arrangement. In the years 2013–2019, a Polish-German research project was carried out here. After a series of non-invasive tests, the cellars of dwelling buildings with artefacts abandoned on the day of the raid, fortifications, market square buildings, central place of craft and trade nature (the so-called mercatorio) and the settlers’ cemetery, as well as the remains of the victims of the raid, were uncovered by excavation. It is a unique complex which provides a lot of information about the pioneering phases of town  formation in the state of the Teutonic Order, and about the everyday life of settlers coexisting most likely with the Old Prussian population. The excavations reveal details of the dramatic events related to the fall of the town, thus confirming written sources. This text presents for the first time the preliminary results of the research on the cemetery of the first settlers in southern Warmia. The necropolis provides evidence for the presence of the Old Prussian indigenous population who played a significant role in this process.

For bioarchaeological studies, a common approach to estimating stature is via regression formulae that are based on the scaling of skeletal elements relative to overall height. Both stature and the proportions of contributing elements may be affected by biocultural and ecological factors, and thus, it is generally preferable to apply population‐specific formulae when possible. Within bioarchaeology, the establishment of population‐specific regression formulae is complicated by the need to base formulae on a sufficiently large number of individuals for which all skeletal elements contributing to stature can be measured. Yet disciplinary conventions within bioarchaeology suggest the need for sample sizes that are larger than typical within related fields, and it is thus possible that disciplinary status quo has led to a systematic bias in the literature toward larger sites, regions with relatively good preservation, and populations associated with these aspects. To investigate the efficacy of combined‐sex stature regression formulae based on relatively small samples, this study calculated population‐specific formulae based on long bone length for 22 individuals from a late medieval Old Prussian cemetery at Bezławki, Poland. The relationship between stature and each of the predictor elements/measurements considered was strong, particularly for maximum femoral length (r = 0.976). For the latter measurement, a sample size as small as 18 produced accurate and precise stature estimates. Further, the Bezławki‐specific formula based on maximum femoral length provided estimates of the stature that performed better than or similar to formulae based on larger populations, supporting that population‐specific formulae may be warranted, even when based on small samples.