Lietuvos istorijos institutas

The article debates the connection of the name of Sėlė village (Utena District) with the ethnonym Sėliai. On the basis of this toponym, investigators frequently move the southern Sëla boundary even down to the vicinity of Tauragnai. The latest information shows that during the 17th–19th centuries Sėlė village was called either Salos or Sėla. It should be noted that to the east of Sëlë lies the boundary of the range, in which the general Lithuanian word „sala“ is used in the meaning of ‘village’. The opinion has been expressed that there is no basis on the example of Sėlė and other related toponyms to correct the southern Sëla border during the Iron Age and Early Middle Ages to the upper reaches of the river Šventoji.

The article is devoted to the person of Petras Tarasenka (1892–1962) and the history of his most important archaeological work Lietuvos Archeologijos Medžiaga (Lithuanian Archaeological Material) (published in Kaunas, 1928). It presents information about this digest and map of Lithuanian archaeological sites, the course and results of the work’s preparation for publication, and the public’s reaction after its release. It draws the conclusion that Lietuvos Archeologijos Medþiaga is the result of P. Tarasenka’s greatest personal efforts, that his objective was to contribute to the nurturing of the national culture, and that the archaeological map of East Prussia with commentary (published in Berlin, 1908) that was prepared by Emil Hollack (1860–1924) should be considered the work’s prototype.

The article examines Lithuanian cartography from an archaeological perspective: it analyses the instructions for cartographers and reviews the results of their work: various sets of maps of Lithuania’s territory (late 17th–20th century). At the centre of the article is the 1891–1907 topographic map of the western provinces of the Russian Empire, 1:21 000 scale, in which the article’s authors analysed the mapped barrows of East and South Lithuania using GIS tools and surveyed them during fieldwork in 2008. The experience accumulated by the authors over three years has allowed them to formulate the general methodological prerequisites for forming a map archaeology research field.

The article presents instances in Lithuania of the wet sieving of archaeological layers (1983–2011), giving the method’s advantages and disadvantages and discussing the difficulties arising in such investigations, the possible ways of resolving them, and the special features of wet sieving archaeological layers compared to dry sieving. The authors especially focus on the experiences of the expedition excavating Bajorai cemetery (Elektrėnai Municipality). In presenting this expedition’s technical measures, the course of the recording of archaeological finds, the time expenditures, and the resources, the article looks at the wet sieving method from a new perspective and as a necessity during expeditions investigating waterlogged or damp archaeological layers.