Archaeologia Baltica

In this article, some new approaches to Taurapilis prehistoric site, situated in the Utena district in Lithuania, are proposed. As a projection of a taurus horn on the ground in a water form, Lake Tauragnas was the principal factor shaping the particular prehistoric space and determining its status. In this way also, the origins of the Taurapilis Central Place, dated to the fifth or sixth centuries, are explained.

Due to the extraordinary find preservations in Nydam mose, Southern Jutland, Denmark, larger parts of quivers from organic material have survived as very rare objects from the first millennium AD. Different quiver types and constructions from two different offerings in the fourth century AD are presented and are used as the background for some general remarks on remains of quivers and on archers of the Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period.

Thorsberg has revealed a large amount of Roman originals and Germanic copies as regards weaponry and status symbols of third-century Germanic elites. The weaponry of Thorsberg is ideal material to analyse the mechanisms of contacts between Barbarian societies and the so-called “advanced civilizations”. This concerns craftsmanship, signs of power and the choice of different precious materials.

The author shows traces of the influence on the Baltic shafted weapon from the territory of Poland (Bogaczewo Culture, Sudovian Culture). These cultures present completely different views of the shafted weapon. In the former, the “Przeworsk” cultural impact prevailed, in the latter the Lithuanian influence is noticeable.

Three vast areas in northern Europe during the Roman Period are known for their people’s development of a distinctive viewpoint regarding the riding horse that was reflected in sacrificial rites (north Germany; the Jutland Peninsula; Zealand, Funen, other Baltic Sea islands, as well as southern Scandinavia) and burial rites (Dollkeim-Kovrovo, Sudovian, West Lithuanian Stone Circle Grave cultures, and, in part, the Lower Nemunas and Bogaczewo cultures). The custom at the end of the second century and in the third century to bury a riding horse (usually only the horse’s head, head and legs, or individual teeth) with armed men was especially distinct in the West Lithuanian Stone Circle Grave Culture area. This burial rite feature distinguishes the mentioned cultural unit (Aistians) area from the communities of other Balts who lived in current Lithuanian territory. The burial rite features that had developed in the West Lithuanian Stone Circle Grave Culture area illustrate the warriors’ hierarchy and the military’s dependency on the society’s nobility that already existed in the Roman Period. These social structure features link the West Balt communities with the northern Germanic peoples. West Lithuanian Stone Circle Grave Culture was the northernmost barbaricum territory in which riding horses were so often buried with people.

In the mid-1990s the finds from the West Balt Circle, whose peoples could be identified as the Aestii of Tacitus, included only ten swords dating back to the Roman Period. Excavations conducted in the following years and the retrieved part of the Prussia Museum in Königsberg, as well as numerous other archive materials, have not significantly increased this number. Therefore, it must be assumed that the Aestii rarely used this weapon, regardless of its great appreciation by other barbarians. This might be presumed to have been related to the specific techniques of mounted combat, in which, apart from spears, axes and long battle-knives were used.

Neither the sword burials of the Late Roman Iron Age, nor the combination of an axe and arrows in graves indicate the presence of in any particular region. A comparison of weapon burial practice associated with inhumation and cremation burial practice demonstrates beyond doubt that those differences which were identified in older publications reflect only overall changes in weapon burial practice over time. Some lance-heads and in particular the few spear-heads known show a close similarity to Scandinavian weapon types and indicate that weapon types became less specific for regions.

At the Early Roman Iron Age graveyard of Hagenow, Mecklenburg, five or six generations of an elite manifest rank and status through the burial custom, among other things using weapons and components of military equipment. The wealth and quality of the grave goods obvious based on the participation in Germanic retinues and also in Roman services.

Graves of two warriors equipped with rich sets of weapons, emerge on the Celtic territories from the early La Tène period till the end of phase D2. Graves with double sets of weapons (one and two-edged swords) placed in metal vessels are known from the apparently Germanic cultures of northern Europe. Celtic graves are evident burials of two (or more) persons, warriors of similar status expressed by analogous weaponry. “Germanic” Oksywie Culture, and Scandinavian finds are burials of individual persons, notable warriors, who were given special sets of weapons to show their social position. A similar situation observed at an archaeological level could have had different grounds and meant different phenomena.

Bronze weapons hint not only at the intensity and effectiveness of warfare in particular societies, but, even more, they may reveal the identity of warriors as a separate group within society. Over most of Europe weaponry is one of the important categories of material culture, although in some regions, like the Eastern Baltic, bronze weapons are a real rarity. There is no doubt that people fought wars here, but instead of bronze weapons they effectively used stone, bone or wooden weapons. Because of the scarcity of bronze weapons, defensive settlements, such as those known from Central and Southeast Europe, and warrior graves, warfare cannot be seen as an organizational principle of social ties per se. There is no reason to assume the existence of retinues or warrior aristocracies as fundamental social units in the Eastern Baltic. However, warfare or war ideology without the existence of the warrior as a social layer is simply inconceivable.