Lietuvos istorijos institutas

The article is devoted to the development of the habitation of the microregion in the vicinity of Baliuliai village and Lake Perūnas (Švenčionys District). After comparing the archaeological data, which were previously available, and the information collected during the fieldwork conducted in implementing the ‘Archaeolandscape’ project with data from an analysis of the palaeobotanical samples that were taken, an attempt was made to determine the likely intensity of the human activity in the microregion during various periods from Palaeolithic to historical times. On the basis of the archaeological and palaeoecological science data, the article presents a scheme of the microregion’s habitation.

The research of the area between Lakes Amalvas and Žuvintas was conducted as part of the topic ‘Reconstruction of the Development of the Social Structure and Economic Activity in the Late Ice Age – Early Holocene (10th–1st millennia BC) society in the Trans-Nemunas region (Užnemunė)’ within the framework of the ‘Archaeolandscape’ scientific research project. The fertile top soils of the Dovinė basin encouraged the expansion of the farmed land and the adaptation of the area to farming. This caused the reconstruction of the hydrographic network, which occurred in the Amalvas and Žuvintas basins as early as the mid-19th century. The first news of isolated archaeological finds discovered in ameliorating Amalvas Bog reaches us from that time. The few stray finds did not receive any attention from archaeologists, the only investigated object in the microregion being Varnupiai hillfort, which was excavated by P. Kulikauskas in 1971. The complex investigation of the microregion, which included a pollen analysis of the sediments of Lake Amalvas, supported by abundant radiocarbon dates of the layers, and archaeological research, which were supported by a critical analysis of the sources, the precise location of long known and newly discovered stray finds, and the detection of new objects, created opportunities to look more deeply at the natural and cultural development in the microregion from the oldest times to historical times.