ABSTRACT
Were there towns before the crusades in Prussia? Geographers, historians and archaeologists have long debated the definition of what constitutes an urban centre (Fehring, 2004). What is important in this context is whether non-agrarian settlements before and after the thirteenth century were comparable, or whether the Teutonic Order’s and bishops’ towns were a completely different cultural phenomenon from earlier Prussian centres. In the context of the southern Baltic, similar roles were fulfilled by central places primarily associated with long-distance trade (Seehandelsplatz or emporia); strongholds with associated settlements which concentrated political and military power with administrative and economic functions, as well serving as the hubs of exchange networks (grody or castra), and the late-medieval towns with distinct municipal functions (civitas). Truso and Wiskiauten can be defined as the main Prussian-Scandinavian proto-urban trading centres or emporia. The abandonment of the former coincided with the emergence of Gdańsk on the western side of the Vistula Delta in the tenth century (Barford, 2005, p. 75), whilst Wiskiauten was abandoned in the eleventh century. Subsequently, between the eleventh and early-thirteenth centuries the role of inter-regional trading and production centres in Prussian territory was adopted by strongholds and their associated settlements, such as Tuwangste in Sambia or Jegliniec in Sudovia, although these sites, or at least those parts that are known archaeologically, provide no evidence of an organised internal layout with streets or thoroughfares, and an intensity of activity comparable to Gdańsk or Lübeck. The borderlands of Prussia, particularly the Kulmerland, saw the development of nucleated settlement associated with the Piast state, the most important of which was Kałdus (Czaja, 2009, p. 178; see also chapters 2 and 3).
