Lietuvos archeologija / Lithuanian Archaeology

Marija Gimbutas (Gimbutienė) is a renowned archaeologist who specialised in European prehistory. This paper explores her life and work, including her personal biography, showing how her upbringing in Lithuania shaped her academic interests and orientations. This paper also reviews her professional achievements and contributions via the lenses of seven aspects of her academic life, namely her time in higher education, her work on Lithuanian folklore and symbolism, her explorations of Old Europe during the Neolithic, her Kurgan Hypothesis and engagement with Baltic studies, her excavations in southeast Europe, her work on the Goddess, and her symbolism work. It also examines academic and popular reactions to her writing and her influence on scholars and public discourse.

Šventoji 2/4, which is situated on the Lithuanian coast, is among the most important East Baltic Stone Age sites due to the extraordinary preservation of archaeological finds in waterlogged gyttja and due to extensive excavations ongoing since 1967. This paper presents the results of excavations in 2014 and subsequent laboratory analyses. This new research has allowed for the revision of the site’s chronology and function as well as provided valuable environmental data. In 3200–2700 cal BC the site was used as a fishing station constructed in the deepest part of the shallow lagoonal lake. Remains of various fishing gear and other human waste left during fishing expeditions accumulated there. Enormous amounts of cranial fish bones left during the initial processing of the catch that was carried out directly at the fishery indicate that cyprinids, pike, and zander were mostly caught at the site. The site most likely continued to be used in similar way during the beginning of the Neolithic, although Globular Amphora culture fishermen did not process fish on the site and transported the entire catch to dwelling sites instead.

‘No human beings, at whatever stage of culture, completely eliminate spiritual preoccupations from their economic concerns’ (Malinowski 1935: xx). Drawing on the history and theory of economic anthropology from the pioneering investigations of Bronislaw Malinowski to the work of a postdoctoral research team at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle/S) between 2009 and 2012, this paper* explores the interface between ritual and the economy in socialist and post-socialist Eastern Europe. The ruptures of early socialism gave way to a re-embedding of the economy that was especially dynamic in the sphere of the household. By contrast, postsocialist disembedding is proving harder to modify.