Lietuvos archeologija

The article is devoted to a discussion of the results of research conducted in implementing the ‘Archaeolandscape’ project in the Jakšiškis microregion. The research was conducted in the vicinity of one of the largest Lithuanian barrow group, the Jakšiškis and Knitiškiai barrow cemeteries. The most important objective during the project was the search for the settlements of the communities that left them and a series of related questions: what size was the settlement, how intense was its life, what was the nature of the activities in it, and what was its relationship with the nearby sites. An attempt was made to answer these questions using tradition archaeological methods and the spot test.

The number of inhabitants and the population density were one of the deciding factors in the development of past societies. But this topic has received little attention from Lithuanian Iron Age investigators, and the rare attempts to address it mostly use the constant presented by H. Łowmiański of 3 people/km2. This article attempts, using palaeodemographic methods to analyse the barrow material, to calculate the number of inhabitants in the Žeimena basin and the part of the microregion to the N of its widening lake area. The first 5 km buffer zone (buffer zone I; 365.5 km2) should be considered as having a barrow cemetery density closer to the average for East Lithuania; the second, which occupies only the left bank of the Žeimena (buffer zone II; 198.5 km2), is an example of exceptional density. When evaluating the number of people buried in the microregion’s barrow cemeteries, the possible large-scale destruction of barrows in the past, the number of burials in a barrow, and the number of individuals in a burial need to be taken into consideration. The probability of error is increased by an imprecise barrow chronology and it is therefore possible to present only fairly broad and somewhat unexpected population density ranges in a historiographical context: in buffer zone I – 0.3–0.6 persons/ km2, in buffer zone II – 0.6–1.1 persons/ km2.