Klaipėdos universitetas

This paper presents an item that has been mentioned in archaeological literature a few times, but never in a detailed analysis: the beak brooch from grave 38 in the cemetery of the Elbląg group at Nowinka. It is a south Scandinavian import that came to northern Poland around the middle of the sixth century, but was in use for quite a long time, which is suggested by traces of wear, as well as introducing a hinge construction that is untypical of that type.

The Early Medieval Scalva region, situated on the Lower Neman,* was, it seems, already relatively densely populated in the Migration Period. The concentration of Migration Period cemeteries on the eastern outskirts of the later city of Tilsit might indicate this. The Am Philosophengang necropolis was one of these sites. Completely unknown until recently, the cemetery is now being ‘rediscovered’ on the basis of archive records

The article presents the publication and an attempt at the analysis of the brooches from grave 165 of the Bol’shoe Isakovo (formerly Lauth) burial ground. These are special finds which produces pieces of animal-headed crossbow brooches of the Migration Period in Sambian-Natangian culture and the western Baltic region. Brooches from the grave of the Bol’shoe Isakovo burial ground should be one of the earliest examples of the animal style in the southeast Baltic, and an instance of contacts between northern Europe and the Sambian population in the Early Migration Period.

This article treats a wide-ranging scientific project ‘The Evolution of the Baltic Sea and the Stages of the Earliest Human Settlement in the Southeast Baltic’ that started in 2009. The main research methods consist of multidisciplinary investigations of key archaeological sites and former glacial water-pools and bogs. The final result of the project is expected to be a model of demographic processes that occurred in the southeast Baltic during the Late Glacial and Early Holocene set against environmental changes.

It has always been technically and economically challenging to build constructions on a shoreline. For that reason, those constructions can be used and maintained for a long time, and today contain interesting archaeological information. Despite this, at the time of carrying out repairs, archaeologists are not usually consulted, and the history of a construction is seen as unimportant. However, with this case study of a log-barrier embankment from the early 20th-century Suomenlinna fortress, a new approach is available, challenging the way archaeologists collect data. The data collected from the site can be used together with the archaeological interpretation to aid in the plan for the reuse of the site.

The article deals with the research potential of inna along the coastline in Sweden and the Åland Islands. Very little research has been done on this kind of establishment in Sweden and Scandinavia. The inn on the island of Koffsan off Sweden and the inn on Rödhamn, Åland Islands, Finland, stand out as examples of what the sites and the archaeological material combined with written sources can tell us about the function of inns in society and about the food and beverages at these establishments. The author also discusses the possibilities to reinterpret some of the earlier results from the site on the Åland Islands.