Archaeologia Baltica

In this article there are being analyzed the natural and social economic structures of Lithuanian coastal strip. The research is based on survey about the hindrances and proposed suggestions for sustainable development. There are presented authors’ results about geographic profile of Lithuania’s coastal region, degree of exploitation and processes of spatial planning, suggestions for improvement of sustainable development of coastal strip. There are distinguished the types of bad examples as institutional, projects related, shortage of financial issues, private housing and the types of good examples as legislative, institutional, projects related, NGOs related for exploitation and sustainable development of coastal strip.

This article presents the review of the development of Lithuanian higher schools during the Soviet period. Chronological data of establishment and transformations of Lithuanian high-schools in 1940–1990 are presented, beginning with the Soviet occupation and ending with the Revival events. The article highlights the structure and specifics of Soviet Lithuanian high-schools, the content of specialists training, provisions of science and studies. Chronologically integral, comprehensive scientific works about higher education development in Soviet Lithuania have not been prepared yet. Most of the information about this period is provided by individual archival documents, Soviet periodical press, commemorative books, different high school publications on the history of their institution, as well as individual researchers memoirs, some features of the development of higher education are revealed in individual scientific works. This article provides an summarized material of various authors and sources and integral analysis of Lithuanian higher education during the Soviet period.

The aim of this article is to update the data on the research into Palanga settlement carried out in 1958, the objectives being to publish the discovered material to its full extent, to determine the lithological and cultural layers of the settlement, and to determine the cultural dependence of the communities that lived there. The following are used in the article: archaeological, osteological and macrobotanical material, which is kept at Kretinga Museum and which has not been published till now; stratigraphy of geological strata obtained during the drilling of geological boreholes; and radiocarbon dating of peat from the cultural layer level. The natural and cultural landscape of the habitation period of Palanga Stone Age settlement is also presented.

In the Middle to Late Neolithic, pile-dwellings existed in Russia only in the Dnepr-Dvina basin and in the European region, in the Alpine zone, and probably in the western Baltic region. Investigations of sites in the Dnepr-Dvina region with underwater excavation methods have been conducted since the 1970s. The history of the development of these methods is presented here. The preliminary results of complex investigations of the Serteya II site are also covered in this article. An analysis of the remains of fauna, palynological analysis, and traceological analysis of bone tools, and modelling with GIS-technologies, allowed us to recreate the economic activities of the inhabitants of the Serteya II settlement. It had a complex character: it was a hunter-gatherer economy that existed alongside a small productive economy. The latter probably had a prestigious character, and did not play a significant role in the economy of ancient people. A comparison of data from typo-technological pottery inquiries with dendrochronological and radiocarbon dates allowed the determination of peculiarities of the material culture of every construction, and the distinguishing elements of local and newly arrived cultures. An analysis of types of wood allowed us to determine the areas of their origin, and to understand when and from what kind of forest repairs were made. Research shows that further investigation in this region will lead to uncovering other pile-dwellings.

The horse bones found in Lithuanian habitation sites that date to the Late Neolithic and to the Early Bronze Age still do not indicate that these horses were ridden upon or used to plough the soil. However, horse bones have been found in Lithuanian territory only in those sites where bones of other animals that were domesticated have been found. This suggests that domesticated horses in Lithuania might have spread together with other domesticated animals by way of cultural diffusion during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age.