Lietuvos archeologija

In 2021, illegal antiquities seekers destroyed a Chernyakhiv Culture burial near the village of Lebedyn. Some of the items and succinct information about their provenance were given to the Cherkasy City Archaeological Museum of the Middle Dnipro Region. An examination of the items and an additional investigation of the find spot allowed for the conclusion that the items came from a Chernyakhiv Culture cremation. The grave goods included artefacts of Roman and Barbarian origin as well as hand-built pottery with direct analogies to the Wielbark Culture. It can be asserted that this was the burial of an East Goth woman of high social rank from the late 3rd – early 4th century, probably the early phase of Stage C3.

The aim of this article is to assess the value of Marija Alseikaitė-Gimbutienė’s (Gimbutas) 1946 dissertation published in Tübingen (Germany). It is also important to follow how much of an impact this work had on Lithuanian archaeology and what inspiration it may provide for scholars today. This paper concentrates on the parts of the book which deal with burial customs during the Roman Iron Age. Relevant problems of cultural divisions based on burial site types as per Gimbutienė are examined to see how much this classification may be accepted today. The second part of Gimbutienė’s dissertation, which focused on the meaning of burial customs, provides insights that are still important for scholarship today, and reveals the young scholar’s ability to reconstruct an old belief system and to discern the prospects for the further investigation of burial site material.