Lietuvos archeologija / Lithuanian Archaeology

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

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.

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.

In this article, I discuss the manner in which the model proposed by Marija Gimbutas regarding the Indo- European migration in Europe was perceived by Romanian specialists. The article is also an extension of my efforts to understand the relations between prehistoric Transylvania and the North-Pontic steppe. Approached from this historiographic perspective, the subject illustrates a situation symptomatic of Romanian archaeology: the lack, with few exceptions, of serious debates on this controversial subject, the frequent repetition of unverified opinions, statements supported by invalid arguments, etc.

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.