In 1998–2000 an expedition from the Balt Archaeology Department State Archaeological Museum Warsaw headed by dr Anna Bitner-Wróblewska and mgr. Marcin Engel carried out rescue excavation of a Jatving settlement at Konikowo (Rostek)1 near the town of Goùdap (Engel, Iwanicki, 2001; Engel, 2002). The settlement (site 2) lies at the foot of an early medieval hill fort, on the lower summit of Góra Goldapska elevation (272 m asl), some three kilometres south of Goldap.

Researchers have been fascinated by carved stones ever since they started to be studied by the first antiquarians and archaeologists. Finds of this type have been recorded in ia Scandinavia, Germany and Russia. In Polish archaeological literature traces of this fascination survive in the correspondence of Wandalin Szukiewicz and Erazm Majewski published in 1900 in the magazine Swiatowit (Szukiewicz, 1900a; Majewski, 1900). Szukiewicz submitted for publication in this popular archaeological periodical photographs of two stones he had come across in Lithuania in the then district of Lida.