Archaeologia Baltica

The history of the medieval Baltic is dominated by the crusading movement of the 13th to 15th centuries. The crusades resulted in significant changes to the organisation, ownership and administration of the landscape, with a significant shift in patterns of land use. However, our understanding of the environmental impact of the crusades has been almost exclusively informed by written sources. This paper synthesises existing palynological evidence for medieval landscape transformation in the southeast and eastern Baltic, focusing on the ecological impact of the crusading movement, and considers some key questions, challenges and priorities for future research.

Viljandi (Fellin), a small town in medieval Livonia, was founded in the second quarter of the 13th century, soon after the Estonian Crusades. The Estonians’ prehistoric hill-fort was replaced by a castle of the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order, the prehistoric settlement was abandoned, and the location for the new town was chosen on the site of a former field more suitable for fortification. In this paper, zooarchaeological material from three sites, the prehistoric settlement, the Order’s castle and the early medieval town, will be discussed. Despite the presumed changes in Estonian society associated with the Crusades, the analyses reveal no profound differences in meat consumption in the transitional period from prehistory to the middle Ages.

This paper focuses on a number of examples of cut marks on animal bones from a range of sites associated with the cultural transformations in the eastern Baltic following the Crusades in the 13th century. Recorded observational and interpretational characteristics are quantified and explained through more detailed selected case studies. The study represents a pilot project, the foundation for a more detailed and systematic survey of a larger dataset within the framework of the ecology of Crusading project. Relatively clear differences between sites are observable on the basis of the cut marks; however, the initial trends do not suggest a straightforward connection between butchery technology and colonisation in the east Baltic region.

In this review of pollen data from the South Swedish uplands, evidence is presented of colonisation and strong agricultural expansion during the 11th to 13th centuries, followed by farm abandonment and land use change during the 14th to 15th centuries. The latter is associated with the Black Death and the late medieval crisis. Pollen data show that abandonment in the uplands resulted in the regrowth of woodland, but also in land use change from cereal growing to grazing. Similar cycles of agricultural expansion and decline are identified also from earlier periods during the Iron Age, which highlights the sensitive character of upland agriculture and settlement.

This paper presents a comparative, diachronic study of the faunal assemblages recovered from two key political, cultural and commercial centres in the medieval Polish-Prussian borderlands: Kałdus in the Kulmerland, and Gdańsk in Pomerania. Both centres were situated in a region which was incorporated into the Teutonic Order’s state following the Crusades against the Prussian tribes in the 13th century. Although comparative trends are noticeable between the two centres which can be linked to the development of the Polish (Piast) state, the variation reflects specific local ecological and cultural contexts. Due to the constraints of space, this study focuses on the relative representation of different species of mammals, birds and fish, demonstrating how diachronic trends can be linked to the marked historical phases associated with the cultural and environmental transformation of this frontier, from one dominated by the Piast state to the later Teutonic Order’s polity.

In the excavated Padure (Beltes) hill-fort in Latvia, cultural layers from the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age (Stage 1), and the middle Iron Age and the Late Iron Age (Stage 2), were detected, which, besides the archaeological material typical of that period, provided abundant zooarchaeological material. This article presents the investigation data from the zooarchaeological material of both stages: the data relate to the butchering techniques used, and the identification of the composition of the faunal species. The investigation was carried out in the bioarchaeological laboratory of the Institute of Baltic Region History and Archaeology at Klaipėda University. As is proven by the investigation, the ratio of domestic animals to hunted wildlife in the two periods compared is not identical. In the second period of habitation of the hill-fort, the number of cattle and sheep/goats decreased, while the number of swine and especially of horses increased. The article also deals with characteristics of butchering techniques of domestic animals and wildlife in both periods of the habitation of the hill-fort, and changes identified in the meat processing. In the second period, the level of processing resulted in greater amounts of meat suitable for food, due to the technical properties of the raw material and the nutritional and commodity value.

This paper reviews the Neolithic period in Ukraine. First, the author analyses what the term ‘Neolithic’ actually means in Ukraine. The paper demonstrates the absence of a universal definition for Neolithic, through a review of some ‘Western school’ archaeological traditions. The term Neolithic is de-emphasised in relation to the study of early cereal cultivation in Ukraine, providing a general understanding of the concept. The paper introduces the main archaeological Neolithic cultures of Ukraine, by presenting their chronological frameworks, areas of distribution and key characteristics. Particular attention is paid to the main chronological pitfalls in the region.

This paper discusses the most important ancient amber tubular beads from the Zvidze settlement in the Lake Lubāns wetlands, and their analogies in the forest zone of Eastern Europe. Special attention is paid to specific forms of amber bead: cylindrical, beads with a thickening in the middle part, rounded, arched diamond-shaped and other archaic beads, long and short barreltype, spool-type, beads with oval pinched cross-cuts, and spherical beads. Analogies of amplified amber beads (with a thickening in the middle) have been found in the very wide area of the forest zone of Eastern Europe (Konchanskoe, Repistche, Tudozero, and so on). A review of the Zvidze tubular amber beads allows us to consider that some bead types (barrel-shaped, spherical, diamond-shaped) are more widespread in the ancient world.