Zusammenfassung: Das Bruchstück eines figürlich verzierten Messerscheidenbeschlags (um 1000/frühes 11. Jahrhundert) von einer spätslawischen Siedlung bei Melzow in der Uckermark kann den sog. „Götterbildbeschlägen“ nach I. Gabriel zugeordnet werden. Es gehört offenkundig in reli giösen Kontext und zeigt wohl eine Szene, bei der eine Gottheit Segen und Leben an Mensch und Tier spendet. Der Fund wird vor dem Hintergrund der paganen Glaubensvorstellungen der Liutizen und zusammen mit seinen Parallelen kulturhistorisch interpretiert. Résumé: Un fragment d’un fourreau de couteau avec décor figuratif provenant d’un habitat de l’époque slave tardive à Melzow dans l’Uckermark et daté vers 1000 apr. J.-C./début du 11e siècle appartient à la catégorie des “appliques avec images divines” identifiée par I. Gabriel. Il fait clairement partie d’un contexte religieux et représente une scène dans laquelle une divinité bénit et donne vie à des animaux et à des êtres humains. Cet article examine cet objet dans le contexte des croyances religieuses des Lutici (ou Liutizi) et des exemplaires comparables connus, et offre une interprétation sur le plan de l’histoire culturelle. Abstract: A fragment of a fitting belonging to the sheath of a knife with figurative decoration (dated to around AD 1000/early 11th century) from a Late Slavic settlement near Melzow in Uckermark can be attributed to the so-called “Idol fittings” identified by Ingo Gabriel. It obviously belongs to a religious context, and probably depicts a scene in which a god-figure is blessing and imparting life to animals and humans. The object is considered here against the background of the religious beliefs of the Lutici (or Liutizi) and interpreted, together with other parallels, in culture historical terms.

In near-surface geophysics, ground-based mapping surveys are routinely employed in a variety of applications including those from archaeology, civil engineering, hydrology, and soil science. The resulting geophysical anomaly maps of, for example, magnetic or electrical parameters are usually interpreted to laterally delineate subsurface structures such as those related to the remains of past human activities, subsurface utilities and other installations, hydrological properties, or different soil types. To ease the interpretation of such data sets, we propose a multi-scale processing, analysis, and visualization strategy. Our approach relies on a discrete redundant wavelet transform (RWT) implemented using cubic-spline filters and the à trous algorithm, which allows to efficiently compute a multi-scale decomposition of 2D data using a series of 1D convolutions. The basic idea of the approach is presented using a synthetic test image, while our archaeo-geophysical case study from North-East Germany demonstrates its potential to analyze and process rather typical geophysical anomaly maps including magnetic and topographic data. Our vertical-gradient magnetic data show amplitude variations over several orders of magnitude, complex anomaly patterns at various spatial scales, and typical noise patterns, while our topographic data show a distinct hill structure superimposed by a microtopographic stripe pattern and random noise. Our results demonstrate that the RWT approach is capable to successfully separate these components and that selected wavelet planes can be scaled and combined so that the reconstructed images allow for a detailed, multi-scale structural interpretation also using integrated visualizations of magnetic and topographic data. Because our analysis approach is straightforward to implement without laborious parameter testing and tuning, computationally efficient, and easily adaptable to other geophysical data sets, we believe that it can help to rapidly analyze and interpret different geophysical mapping data collected to address a variety of near-surface applications from engineering practice and research.

High status burial remains one of archaeology's most evocative types of site – but it is not always easy to know why they were built, where and when they were. The author describes a group of élite burials that appeared in north Europe in the late eleventh-twelfth century in a historical context that is unusually clear, and proposes the rise of a pagan élite in the face of aggressive Christianisation from the neighbours.

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