Lietuvos archeologija / Lithuanian Archaeology

The Final Palaeolithic site at Eiguliai in Central Lithuania, was monitored by Konstantinas Jablonskis and his daughter, Rimutė Jablonskytė (Rimantienė), when she was already in her teens. By the late 1940s, the site had been partly destroyed, but not before yielding many surface finds. She, therefore, decided to obtain as much archaeological data as possible. Rimantienė’s excavations at the Eiguliai 1 site became one of the very first investigations of her career. The collected lithic assemblage suddenly became a reference in researching Swiderian culture sites. The Eiguliai site was well known to scientists from the Eastern Baltic countries as well as to colleagues in Western Europe. As time passed and new excavation methods appeared, the site, which had been recorded only by several pictures and trench plans and where most of the material had been collected from the sandy surface, came to be regarded as not informative enough and ceded its importance to other newly discovered Swiderian sites. However, during the past five years, with the help of consultations with Rimantienė, the archaeological data from Eiguliai was reviewed and the discussion resumed. The aim of this publication is to present the entire lithic collection of morphological tools ascribed to the earliest stage of the site’s occupation, along with some new insights into the archaeological data from Eiguliai. The site is considered to have been a place that was visited multiple times for hunting purposes. While the Swiderian culture assemblage predominates, the possibility of discussing an even earlier visit pre-dating the Swiderian culture is considered. Various remains of archaeological features once recorded at the site are reviewed and their interpretation is clarified: there are probably only a few features that could be ascribed to the Stone Age, contrary to what had been previously proposed. An analysis of the lithic assemblage has shown that people had probably brought flint material to the site, but did not stay there for long, and made quick decisions when tools needed to be produced.

The site of Groß Fredenwalde was discovered in 1962 and has been known as a Mesolithic multiple burial since 14C-dates verified an early Atlantic age in the early 1990s. New research since 2012 reconstructed the situation of the poorly documented rescue excavation in 1962 and identified six individuals from at least two separate burials. The new excavations uncovered more burials and Groß Fredenwalde stands out as the largest Mesolithic cemetery in North Central Europe and the oldest cemetery in Germany. In this paper the known burial evidence from this site is presented and the location of the cemetery, mortuary practices, and grave goods are discussed in a broader European context. Northern and Eastern connections appear especially tangible in Groß Fredenwalde and it is suggested that the community associated with the Groß Fredenwalde Mesolithic cemetery was integrated into wider cultural networks connected to the North and East.

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

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 presents the results of traceological analyses of bone points and harpoon heads discovered at hunter-gatherer-fisher sites 1, 3, 4, 6 and 23 in Šventoji, coastal Lithuania, c. 3500–2700 cal bc. The data obtained through the studies were used to interpret technological processes and operational chains resulting from the production of these artefacts, as well as in answering questions surrounding the function of some specimens. Another important result of the presented research is the confirmation, thanks to an SEM-EDX analysis, of the presence of an inlay in the decoration visible on one of the harpoon heads.

The aim of the article is to outline the causes, mechanisms, and course of the Neolithisation process in South-Eastern Poland, as seen from a global (macro-) and local (microregional) perspective. It has been assumed that the most effective tool for analyzing this process on a macro scale is a set of concepts and rules constituting the theory of globalization (Hodos 2017). Cultural analysis (Wuthnow 1987), on the other hand, considers conflict as the main driving force of deep changes on a micro scale. Globalization is a form of connectivity that is the price humans pay to access resources that satisfy their desire for status and wellbeing. A common human pursuit is the desire to achieve a higher status and to improve one’s own wellbeing. People, realizing their intentions and aspirations, enter into conflicts which can potentially be one of the main sources of crises, and thus also of cultural change.