This study sums up the research carried out so far and our current knowledge on Jastorf culture populations in northwest Poland with a special focus on the distinctive traits of the Jastorf settlements in two regions: Pomerania and Wielkopolska. It aims to depict a particular qualitative breakthrough that was witnessed in Polish research into this cultural formation in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The findings presented, and above all the pool of sources, are aimed at providing a basis for discussing the cultural situation in northwest Poland in the early younger Pre-Roman period. The sources amount to a signpost towards the moment when the cultural picture of the central European Barbaricum was taking its dramatic shape over thelast few centuries BC.