Lietuvos istorijos institutas

The Daugava River has been one of the most important traffic arteries in the Eastern Baltic region. The establishment of more than 30 hillforts alongside this river reflects the importance of this waterway. Most of these hillforts are understudied. Thus, the bigger picture regarding the hillforts’ inhabitation patterns, chronology, environment, and function(s) remain unknown. As such, the INHILLDAUGAR project seeks to systematically analyze the river’s landscape on a macro scale by combining palaeoenvironmental, archaeological, and linguistic studies. This article presents the genesis of the INHILLDAUGAR project and preliminary results from the 2022 and 2023 field campaigns.

The SE Baltic Bronze Age is characterized by a lack of indigenous metalwork traditions as it had been a time when metal finds were predominantly imported or were cast locally, but in foreign styles. This paper analyses the bronze casting remains found in the SE Baltic and discusses the role of these production sites within a wider European network. Through typological identification of the negatives in casting moulds, we assess predominantly Nordic artefact casts, in which the production of KAM (Kel’ty Akozinsko-Melarskie) axes was distinguished at a higher frequency. We hypothesize that several coastal regions were temporarily settled by people of Nordic origin who participated in an exchange with local SE Baltic communities via itinerant bronze production. Foreign settlement areas as indicated by stone ship burials are known in Courland and S Saaremaa as well as in N Estonia and the Sambian Peninsula. From these territories, further communication was developed with local communities settled mostly in enclosed sites in coastal areas and inland, in the vicinity of the River Daugava, the SE Latvian and NE Lithuanian uplands, and the Masurian Lakeland.