Klaipėdos universitetas

Scant attention has been paid in the social sciences to the problem of defining units of analysis. The problem of using culture as a unit of analysis is that culture is not a unit of analysis like a jury is a unit of analysis. It is also a more ambiguous unit of analysis than religion, ethnicity or gender, units which are possible to identify and define. It is concluded that the individual is the least problematic unit for analysis. The limitations of using the individual as the unit of analysis are that group characteristics and behaviors can only be measured indirectly and studies are prone to the ‘individual differences fallacy.’ It is dubious that one can generalize from individuals beyond the community. There are no ultimate primitive units of culture and whatever unit for analysis the researcher selects depends on the questions asked. Always however, a unit of analysis must be clearly defined, it cannot be used as a variable rather variables are extracted from the unit of analysis. Most importantly, there should always be a theory of analysis that justifies the choice of the units for analysis.

This article addresses the complicated issues of the primary population of the forest zone in Eastern Europe at the turn of the Pleistocene-Holocene and the forms of its occupation by humans.

Social or Cultural Anthropology, in the Western sense, is little known territory in parts of contemporary East Europe. It is the case in Lithuania where biological anthropology traditionally claims the term anthropology for itself. Lithuanian ethnology and sociology partially fill the void normally covered by anthropology. There were definite political, academic and practical factors that stunted the growth of anthropology in Lithuania. The aim of this article is to identify these factors, and to define the sphere and the field of research and instruction, that should be allocated to anthropology. I seek also to present the case for an urgent need of the discipline to be established in the educational, research and applied frontiers of contemporary Lithuanian society. It has been even more complicated to establish the importance and capability of socio-cultural anthropology as a separate field of endeavour vis-à-vis Lithuanian ethnology. While socio-cultural anthropology in the West examined the other and otherness, there was no political interest for a newly independent nation-state in a discipline with a wrong focus.

This article will explore and explain the effects of the beer law introduced by the Supreme Administrative Court of Republic of Lithuania in July, 2001. I will argue that the new law has been adopted as a result of the strategic calculation and manipulation of the legal system by the municipality of Vilnius. As a result of global finance flows and tourism the law and authoritative voices of the city council seeks to redefine moral, social and physical boundaries within the city space and introduce a new moral public behaviour in the centre of Vilnius. The article suggests that common citizens, unable to participate in the decision-making process, undertake acts of resistance: tactical manoeuvres and creative acts of hidden transcripts of how to subvert and challenge the law. The materials for the article were collected during my three months field works in the community of beer drinkers, as well as 10 partly structuralised interviews with policeman, also 1 interview with high administrative person at Vilnius city municipality.

The aim of this article is to deconstruct the notions of blood and blood-kinship or Lithuanian descent, as it is understood in state institutions that apply the Lithuanian Law on Citizenship in practice. In particular the article will discuss how the state classifies people, how it fixes or destroys its relations towards different ethnic groups, and what ideas and criteria are employed in fixing this relationship. The starting point of this study is the Law on Citizenship, which creates or destroys the relationship of the state toward individuals and communities. I will not only deal with the textual representations of the Law on Citizenship, but will also take a look at the discussions in the Seimas (Parliament) of Lithuania while the Law of Citizenship has been processed and will present the opinions of politicians who were active in passing it. I will also try to show the instrumentality of the ideas around the notion of descent which in my point is more cultural rather than biological.

Today four different expressive versions of local Epigravettian industries represented by groups of sites can be defined in the Middle Dnieper basin: Mezinian, Ovruchian, Mezhirichian and Yudinovian industries. In addition, two other quite specific ones are represented by single collections: Eliseevichi 1 and Zhuravka.

The aim of the article is to discuss the origins and issues of neo-tribalist and neo-pagan movements and their cultural, political, educational, international effect in Lithuania. The main object of our investigations is activities of modern neo-Semigallians (žiemgaliai) and Samogitians (žemaičiai). The main problem for analysis is the kind of impact Lithuanian ethnology has on supporting new imagined identities and modern consumer demands support for making new cultural, social, and historical identities.

In this article I will use my experience with Native American cultures and religions to offer an alternative perspective on Lithuanian paganism. I will compare the definitions, methodology, and politics in the studies of indigenous Baltic and Native American religions, or spirituality and belief systems. In order to understand the situation of Lithuanian paganism, I employ two perspectives: a viewpoint of a “native” Lithuanian combined with the anthropology of “Native” North America. I also argued for the need of interdisciplinary perspectives on a cultural phenomenon. Collaboration of cultural anthropologists, ethno-musicologists, social scientists, historians, and archaeologists would provide the richness of sources, methodologies, and theoretical perspectives on Lithuanian paganism. I also emphasized the need for more fieldwork, especially qualitative, in order to include the indigenous views, stories and contexts. It is also paramount that the scholars of Baltic Studies as a new anthropological school remain open to their re-search outcome and experiment with various methodologies and perspectives, learn from other ethno-graphic examples and apply that experience to the unique local Baltic situation.

Gebiet des unteren Wislaflusses wurde besiedelt von den Menschen nach dem Rückzug des Gletschers erst in der Allerödzeit. Es handelte sich wahrscheinlich um Schöpfer der Rückenspitzen-Kultur. Es kann jedoch nicht ausgeschlossen werden, das diese Gebiete gleichzeitig von Gruppen der Lyngby und Hamburger Kultur besiedelt wurden.

Local and exotic flint use and distribution are considered as markers of group mobility. The Arch Backed Pieces and the Mazovian societies organised logistics expeditions in various directions, south-north, west-east, using natural routes as river valleys, but also crossing mountains. Their motives seem to be different and not only connected with economic necessity and subsistence strategy. Group mobility, observed rarely on distances more than tens of hundreds of kilometres, was probably a seasonal event, but sometimes may be a reflection of a permanent exodus.