In 2021, in the course of illegal metal detecting, a crossbow brooch with a returned foot was discovered at Cynków, Puławy County (SE Poland), at the edge of the Bystra River valley in the Nałęczów Plateau. The artefact was presented to the National Museum in Lublin. There are remains of Przeworsk Culture settlement known from the area in question (Fig. 1).

The brooch (Fig. 2) is made of silver (93.85%) with a small addition of copper (4.87%), and it measures 81 mm in length. Its extended false spring allows it to be classified as type A.168. On the head of the brooch, there is a shaft, cast together with the bow, which was used to mount a profiled knob; a similar knob crowns the axis bar of the spring. The bow is decorated in its upper and lower parts with four single rings of beaded wire. Such decoration is typical of type A.167 brooches, known from the Wielbark Culture area, which correspond, according to the division proposed by J. Andrzejowski and A. Żórawska, to variant a2. Such ornamentation also occurs among the various types of crossbow brooches with a returned foot, especially large silver specimens (Grosse Armbrustfibeln)33, found in the territory occupied by the Balt cultures.

Brooches of type A.168, corresponding to the Cynków fibula, are characteristic mainly of the so-called Gothic culture circle, especially the Chernyakhov and Sântana de Mureş Cultures12, and are less frequently recorded in the assemblages of the Wielbark Culture, most often in zones A and D of Wielbark Culture settlement. In the case of the Lublin Region, brooches of this type are known almost exclusively from Masłomęcz Group sites.

In the Wielbark Culture, brooches of type A. 168 occur from stage C1b to phase C2 and, possibly, phase C39.10. Fibulae of type A.167 with beaded wire rings are characteristic of phases C1b−C2, although some specimens, especially those scarcely decorated with single rings, may be dated to stage C1a. The brooch from Cynków can therefore be dated to stage C1b at the earliest, however, attributing it to phase C2 seems more likely. Considering the picture of cultural transformation in the Lublin Region7, the fibula in question should be associated with the Wielbark Culture.