New Data on the Structure and Economy of Unenclosed Settlements in the Late Striated Ware Culture: the Skudeniai Settlement Site in Southeastern Lithuania
The paper examines the impact of total land reclamation on the Soviet modernisation of agriculture and the countryside, analyses the political, economic, and social aspects of the Soviet reconstruction of the homestead settlement system, and attempts to assess the economic
effect of land reclamation and its impact on the countryside. The leadership of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party managed to use the implementation of the all-Union large-scale land reclamation programme quite effectively for Lithuania’s economic interest, industrial development, and modernisation of the agricultural sector. The destruction of the farmstead settlement structure during total land reclamation accelerated the internal and social urbanisation of the countryside, which contributed to the formation of a homogeneous Soviet society and eliminated socio-cultural and material-lifestyle disparities between the city and the country. The radical
Soviet reconstruction (modernisation) of the countryside, which continued for over two decades, was mainly coercive, revolutionary, and therefore painful for the rural society; it deformed the evolutionary processes in the countryside.
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.