Lietuvos archeologija

1974–1978 m. Lietuvos istorijos institutas išleido keturtomį „Lietuvos archeologijos atlasą“. Pirmoji, habilituotos daktarės Rimutės Rimantienės redaguota, atlaso knyga skirta akmens ir bronzos amžių paminklams bei pavieniams šio laikotarpio radiniams (Atlasas 1974). Antroji šios knygos dalis (Bagušienė, Rimantienė 1974) apima visus kartografuotus gludintus akmeninius dirbinius, saugomus Lietuvos

The Sub-Neolithic hunter-gatherer-fisher (HGF) groups and Corded Ware (CW) agro-pastoral group interactions within the Lithuanian portion of the Neman Basin around ~3000 BC did not follow the same patterns of agriculturalisation seen elsewhere in Europe during Neolithization. The variation of interaction in this agricultural frontier zone provides valuable insight into the way information exchange between groups drives the exchange of intercultural information and how information exchange between groups ultimately the adaptive morphogenesis of culture. This article’s primary author has already studied this outlier behaviour and the Unified Agricultural Frontier Model (UAFM) was proposed in volume 45 of this journal (Troskosky et al. 2019). The article presented in this volume is a companion piece to the 2019 publication which further explains and tests the mechanics underlying the UAFM. The UAFM applies self-organised criticality (SOC) to the hypothesis that marked cultural shifts are most likely to occur in response to increased levels of stress affect within a society. Stress affect is defined as the dissonance between encultured expectations of reality and phenomenologically lived reality within a population. To test this hypothesis, The Arithmetic Logarithm Illustrating Cultural Exchange (ALICE) model was developed; it provides confirmation that information exchange drives the behaviour of the UAFM across frontier zones. This model provides strong computational confirmation that information drives the behaviour of the UAFM across frontier zones. Theoretically, ALICE supports a general model for information flow between different cultures, facilitating corresponding cultural changes across any frontier. It models how increased levels of stress affect within interacting groups can lead to shifts of societal behaviour marked by a pattern of periods of equilibrium alternating

Priešistorinių žmonių palaikų stroncio izotopų santykio analizė (87Sr/86Sr) leidžia įvertinti jų mobilumą ir identifikuoti pirmos kartos imigrantus, tačiau jos potencialas stipriai priklauso nuo tiriamo regiono geologijos heterogeniškumo ir biologiškai prieinamo stroncio 87Sr/86Sr santykio variacijos pažinimo. Lietuvos archeologijoje stroncio izotopų analizė pirmą kartą panaudota tik 2019–2020 m. Šiame straipsnyje aptarsime šio metodo taikymo galimybes pietryčių Baltijos regione, kurias iliustruosime Donkalnio ir Spigino akmens amžiaus kapinynų buvusiose Biržulio ežero salose tyrimu.

South-Eastern Lithuanian Stone Age pottery reflects the way of life, nutrition, social status, artistic expression, and intercommunity relationships of its creators and users. Natural conditions unfavourable for the survival of organic material and the intermingling of artefacts from different periods in sandy settlements limit the ability to precisely date and reconstruct the long, distinctive process of Neolithisation that began in the late 6th millennium bc. Analysing the traces of ceramic vessel use, the structure of the pottery, the coiling and decoration technologies, their changes and reasons, it is possible to understand better the traditions of the Forest Neolithic communities and the encounters of different influences in SE Lithuania.

This article is dedicated to Gimbutas’ approach to prehistoric amber and the results of her hypothesis for 21st-century archaeology. Amber is one of the constant threads in her research but hypotheses about amber have yet to be summarized. It is our aim to discuss the assessment of Gimbutas’ studies of amber in a non-exhaustive format, which can help to understand the focal points of her research, especially the chronological changes of amber utilisation from the Mesolithic to the Bronze Age. We w will discuss Gimbutas’ proposals in respect to the amber routes and interpret her ideas from the perspective of recent research. We will also discuss the question of the possible utilisation of amber from western Ukraine’s Klesov deposit, which is very similar to succinite. This article focuses especially on the question of how we can understand the meaning of amber in the Bronze Age and suggests the idea that amber had a symbolic rather than economic value in the local Eastern Baltic societies.

In this paper, we present the main results of interdisciplinary project that allowed us to formulate a new perspective on the economy of the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Baltic region. New excavations at the Late Bronze Age fortified settlements of Garniai 1 (Utena district municipality) and Mineikiškės (Zarasai district municipality) lead us to analyse the economy of the communities in much greater detail and to formulate a more reliable economical model than before. This paper reviews the new results of archaeobotanical investigations of these fortified settlements, as well as δ13C and δ15N data of food remains in Late Bronze Age pottery, grains and animal bone collagen samples. These analyses allowed us to refine and clarify the likely dietary practices of consumers of certain products in the Eastern Baltic region. The paper also publishes new data on the elemental composition and lead isotopes of metalware, thereby adding to our earlier findings These studies show that metallurgy as a specialized activity did not play a significant role in the Late Bronze Age economy, but its emergence was driven by the economic changes of the period. In contrast, the production of high-level bone-antler artifacts reflects the activity of specialized craftsmen in Late Bronze Age settlements.