RZESZÓW, POLAND—Iwona Florkiewicz of the University of Rzeszów recently examined a spindle whorl unearthed more than 60 years ago in Czermno, a site in southeastern Poland, according to a report in Science in Poland. A spindle whorl adds weight to a spindle, prevents the thread from sliding off, and helps to maintain the spindle’s spin and control its speed. Florkiewicz said this whorl had been made of slate from what is now Ukraine. She also discovered that the whorl had been inscribed with Cyrillic letters. “Archaeologists probably did not expect spindle whorls to have inscriptions, so these objects were not analyzed in this respect,” she said. The letters spell the man’s name Hoten, and may have been a sign of ownership, or possible secondary use as an amulet. “The spindle whorl probably comes from the time when this area was a part of Kievan Rus,” she explained. “Remember that Czermno was a borderland town, where cultural influences from the east and the west mixed.” For more, go to “Off the Grid: Krakow, Poland.”