Archaeologia Baltica

The article is devoted to examine the importance of horse image in the poetic texts of various genre Lithuanian folk songs from different local ethnic regions. We find different meanings of the biological horse here, such as riding-horse, working horse, mare and jade here as the representatives in the special social context here. The general conclusion is made about horse as very important symbolic object with wide and deep its meanings in the poetic texts of Lithuanian folk songs.

Authors present problems connected with horse sacrifices in Early Middle Ages in Prussia. Discoveries nearby Poganowo site IV hill-fort, create new possibilities to discuss about Prussian religion in Early Middle Ages. Stone statue, cairns, hearths and remains of sacrificed horses have similarities to numerous cult places in Europe and in Asia.

The paper presents the problem of archaeological, archaeozoological and anthropological interpretations of horse burials from the Roman Period cemeteries from the Bogaczewo Culture (Masurian Lakeland) territory. It is presented on the basis of the multidisciplinary research of the cemetery in Paprotki Kolonia located in the heart of Bogaczewo Culture territory.

This article presents an overview of the representations of the horse and horseman in Corded Ware Culture studies. A survey of the literature is proposed, discussing assumptions of the role of the horse in the communities of this culture.

In this article, we discuss the phenomenon of crescent-shaped pendants dating back to the Late Roman Iron Age and Early Migration Period (3rd – 6th centuries AD). Placed on horse’s foreheads, these crescent-shaped pendants evidently embodied a mythological link between the moon and the horse. The same link is clearly reflected in linguistic data and folklore right up until the 20th century. We draw special attention to a horse with a white mark on its forehead called laukas (adj.), laukis (noun) in Lithuanian, which derives from the I-E root *louk- ‘shining, bright’, as also does the Latin luna (< *louksnā). Considering the data as a whole, we propose an unexpected link between the Baltic and Roman traditions.