Żyglin Dune

In the woods near Żyglin, a district of Miasteczko Śląskie, a small scrap of an old dune has survived – a flattened patch measuring about 20 by 40 metres. The rest of the sand was dug out in the 20th century for the coal-mining industry, and this fragment survived only because a high-voltage pylon stands on it. In 2013 archaeologists found traces here of a camp of Mesolithic hunter-gatherer-fishers more than 8,000 years old.

A dune from the end of the Ice Age

According to researchers, the dune formed during the Younger Dryas, the last cold spell at the close of the Ice Age, when south-westerly winds prevailed. It was an arched dune belonging to a larger dune field, its slopes running gently down to peat bogs, a former small lake and wetlands. Before quarrying began, the surviving patch lay in a hollow between two crests of the dune.

What was found

Archaeological and geological work was carried out in 2013 at the site designated Miasteczko Śląskie 2. A research team, partly from the University of Silesia, including archaeologist Eugeniusz Foltyn, described it in 2018 as the edge of a larger camp or a short stopover by a group of Mesolithic hunters. The researchers tentatively link the flint assemblage to the Duvensee complex or the Komornica culture. The dune's inhabitants made flint tools, probably hunted birds and gathered minerals for making pigments.

Charcoal from the layer beneath the finds was radiocarbon-dated to 6816–6593 BC. The dune has later chapters too: traces from the Roman period and the Middle Ages were found, and in the neighbouring peat bogs, charcoal layers from the Neolithic. Peat was probably dug and dried here as early as the 4th–5th century AD, and the researchers link the growth of this activity to mining and metallurgy around Tarnowskie Góry, which needed wood and charcoal.

Tripto tips

This is a research site, not a developed attraction: don't expect signs or a nature trail. Your landmark is the high-voltage pylon in the forest near Żyglin, by the old forest track leading towards Miotek and Kalety. You can see the spot itself in a quarter of an hour, so it is best combined with a bike ride through the surrounding forests. Do not dig or take anything away – every flint matters to the researchers.