Bliujiene Lithuanian Archaeology V volume Roman Migration periods (2024)

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R. Banytė-Rowell, A. Bitner-Wróblewska, Ch. Reich, West Lithuania as a Golden Bridge between the Sea and the Baltic hinterland in Northeast Poland during the Roman and Migration Periods. In: The Sea and the Coastlands (= Archaeologia Baltica 23) (Klaipėda 2016), 140-151

Rasa Banyte-Rowell, Christine Reich

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A Hundred Years of Archaeological Discoveries in Lithuania

Audrone Bliujiene

The development and cultural change that were running on both sides of the middle reaches of the Nemunas River, otherwise known as the Trans-Nemunas region (Lith. Užnemunė) and Southeast Lithuania still has been little investigated. Therefore natural that the approach to the region’s genesis is complicated. This presentation discuses development and cultural change of the Trans-Nemunas region and Southeast Lithuania from the late 1st to the 6th/7th centuries on the basis of contemporaneous burial sites and the similarities of the funeral rites and material culture. In Lithuanian archaeological historiography, which is intertwined with the historical, linguistic, and ultimately archaeological data, two main opinions can be seen on the question of the Trans-Nemunas region and Southeast Lithuania. Authors, in writing about the left bank of the Nemunas, usually see this territory as inhabited by communities that practiced different burial customs (the Trans-Nemunas region burial sites), that are later connected with the Sudovians or Jatvingians. Discussions mostly arise about whether Southeast and East Lithuania should be seen as culturally different territories or as forming a single range, that of the East Lithuanian barrows. Recently in the Trans-Nemunas region and Southeast Lithuania made archaeological excavations, found sites and collected stray finds, likewise new and revision of already had archaeological materials and finally comprehensive comparison of available material with evidence from the Bogaczewo culture and Sudovian cultural groups allow formulating a new approach about genesis and development of the both territories.

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R. Banytė-Rowell, Searching for links between artefacts from areas of prehistoric dwelling sites and burial grounds. Lietuvos archeologija, vol. 43, 87-114.

Grave-goods belong to the sphere of sacrum where property donated for the dead might reflect a distorted picture of reality. They are the result of creative activity performed in „real life“. Therefore finds from dwelling sites have great importance for connecting artefacts from burial grounds back to the sphere of profanum. Several examples from Lithuanian archaeology are presented concerning dwelling sites as centres of production and exchange of artefacts that later found their way into grave-sets. Some considerations are presented regarding the elements of costume of people of the Brushed Pottery Culture; comparision of distribution of Roman imports in cemeteries and dwelling sites; the importance of chronological indicators has been distinguished thanks to databases of burial sites for the dating of layers in dwelling sites. Finally we present some hyphotesis about the possible everyday or ceremonial functions of outfit elements based on the example of female temple ornaments.

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Audronė Bliujienė. South Lithuanian barrows. In: G. Zabiela, Z. Baubonis, E. Marcinkevičiūtė (eds.), A Hundred Years of Archaeological Discoveries in Lithuania. Vilnius.

Audrone Bliujiene

The development and cultural change that were running on both sides of the middle reaches of the Nemunas River, otherwise known as the Trans-Nemunas region (Lith. Užnemunė) and Southeast Lithuania still has been little investigated. Therefore natural that the approach to the region’s genesis is complicated. This presentation discuses development and cultural change of the Trans-Nemunas region and Southeast Lithuania from the late 1st to the 6th/7th centuries on the basis of contemporaneous burial sites and the similarities of the funeral rites and material culture. In Lithuanian archaeological historiography, which is intertwined with the historical, linguistic, and ultimately archaeological data, two main opinions can be seen on the question of the Trans-Nemunas region and Southeast Lithuania. Authors, in writing about the left bank of the Nemunas, usually see this territory as inhabited by communities that practiced different burial customs (the Trans-Nemunas region burial sites), that are later connected with the Sudovians or Jatvingians. Discussions mostly arise about whether Southeast and East Lithuania should be seen as culturally different territories or as forming a single range, that of the East Lithuanian barrows. Recently in the Trans-Nemunas region and Southeast Lithuania made archaeological excavations, found sites and collected stray finds, likewise new and revision of already had archaeological materials and finally comprehensive comparison of available material with evidence from the Bogaczewo culture and Sudovian cultural groups allow formulating a new approach about genesis and development of the both territories.

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Burials with Horses and Equestrian Equipment on the Lithuanian and Latvian Littorals and Hinterlands (from the fifth to the eighth centuries)

Audrone Bliujiene

In the fifth to the eighth centuries, graves of well-armed men and their riding horses –or the ritual parts of horses– were spread throughout almost the entire mainland part of Lithuania and Latvia, or in the territory between the Nemunas and Daugava / Western Dvina Rivers. This was the northernmost part of Europe in which the custom had spread in the fifth to the eighth centuries. While the horsemen’s and horses’ burial customs varied in separate regions of the defined area, still everywhere the horseman and horse were interred in one grave pit, with the horse almost always to the person’s left. In their journey to the Afterlife, however, the bond between horseman and horse began to vary in the communities that lived in the more peripheral regions. The variety of burial customs was associated with differences in the communities’ social structure; these differences affected interment traditions and formed different burial rites. The custom that existed in the Roman Period on the littorals of Lithuania and Latvia to bury ritual horse parts (the head or head and legs) and spurs with armed men disappeared; here only bridle bits symbolized the horse in armed men’s graves in the fifth to the eighth centuries. Warriors’ graves with equestrian equipment spread throughout the entire region between the Nemunas and Daugava in the fifth to eighth centuries. With the change in burial customs (with the spread of cremation), and, apparently, in worldview, riding horse burials appeared that no longer could be associated with the concrete burials of people.

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The Bog Offerings of the Balts: ‘I Give in Order to Get Back’

Audrone Bliujiene

The bog offerings of the Balts dating back to the period from the first century to the first half of the eighth century, and found in the Nemunas-Daugava interfluvia, are studied as part of the panhuman experience, and as a result of the influence of the Germanic culture of a period covering the Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period. In the lands of the Balts, however, offerings in water turned into a self-contained phenomenon known until historic times. This article discusses the links between bog offering sites and sacred waters. It discusses the position of bog offerings in the archaeological complex, the composition of offerings and changes in them, and the main intentions of the offerings, which can be characterised as offerings of war booty (to the god of war, as proof of a warrior’s honour), the transfer of valuables into the transcendental space (give to get back), and communication with the gods and with ancestors (requests and tokens of gratitude).

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R. Banytė-Rowell. A brooch from Gibaičiai Cemetery – designed on the crossroad between Eastern Baltic areas

Rasa Banyte-Rowell

It seems that Northern Lithuania was one of the regions via which cultural interactions in different directions were kept and locally melted. The Gibaičiai brooch with a double spiral which is similar to Almgren type 211 represents the style which was typical of the Dollkeim-Kovrovo, Bogaczewo, Sudovian and West Lithuanian cultures of the Balts. The latter brooch indicates the connections of inhabitants of Northern Lithuania towards the S-SW. The brooch with a wheel motif from Gibaičiai represents the trends which were common for Central and Northern Lithuania, Southern Latvia, and an area of Tarand cemeteries in Northern Latvia and Estonia. It indicates that the inhabitants of Northern Lithuania constituted a unique cultural unit with the areas of Southern Latvia and it was somehow at least slightly different from the neighbouring region of Žemaitijan Barrows. Northern Lithuania was a place of crossing of continental routes towards lands of Baltic Finns.

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A. Simniškytė. Burial Traditions in Northeast Lithuania. In: G. Zabiela, Z. Baubonis, E. Marcinkevičiūtė (ed.), A Hundred Years of Archaeological Discoveries in Lithuania (Vilnius 2016), 326-337

Andra Simniskyte

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On Both Sides of the Middle Reaches of the Nemunas River. A New Approach to Old Problems

Audrone Bliujiene

The burial sites in the Trans-Nemunas Region and Southeastern Lithuania, for the equipment of which stones were abundantly used, are distributed on the landscape in three groups. In Southeastern Lithuania, one can distinguish the northern (Group 1) and southeastern (Group 2) groups of stone barrows, and in the Trans-Nemunas Region, the southwestern group of burial sites (Group 3). The equipment, the burial customs, and the finds of the Late Roman and the Migration periods allow to consider the Trans-Nemunas region and Southeastern Lithuania as peripheral areas of Suwałki, and partially Gołdap and Augustów groups of the Sudovian Culture, or even separate groups of the Sudovian Culture. However, the question whether the Trans-Nemunas Region and Southeastern Lithuania formed a coherent whole or represented three different peripheral areas of the Sudovian Culture remains open, as that requires additional archaeological studies and analysis of the available empirical material.

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Lithuanian Amber Artifacts in the Middle of the First Millennium and Their Provenance Within the Limits of Eastern Baltic Region

Audrone Bliujiene

2009

The spread of amber in Lithuania and its popularity over different periods, application of amber in ornament production, changing trends in amber jewelry wear as well as the links of these customs with gender, sex, and, more generally, with the Lithuanian ivorld outlook, are the issues usually discussed based on ungrounded assumptions that the amber artifacts found in Lithuanian burial sites and the cultural strata of hill-forts and settlements had originated from the Lithuanian coast. It is unexpected, but credible possibility, that Baltic Sea amber artifacts, belonging to different archeological sites across Lithuania, are not only local products, but also imports via different trade routes. As far as analysis of Lithuanian amber artifacts has established, raw amber was exported from the coast southwards. Lathed and semi-lathed amber beads found at the cemeteries in central Lithuania, the lower Nemunas region and even in coastal Lithuania and dated to the late Roman Iron Age—early...

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Bliujiene Lithuanian Archaeology V volume Roman Migration periods (2024)
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