Archaeologia Baltica

Items with the ox-head are a very interesting archaeological phenomenon in the Baltic Sea area in the Roman Period. The earliest category of these finds is drinking horn fittings, which appeared in the Early Roman Period on Jutland and the Danish islands. At the beginning of the Late Roman Period, in the territory of the West Balts in Masuria, brooches with the ox-head occurred. According to the scientific tradition, they are interpreted as the effect of influences from the western zone of the shore of the Baltic Sea. Nowadays, when new finds of items with the ox-head (drinking horn fittings, brooches) are found in Przeworsk culture, it is necessary to analyse this thesis again.

The article deals with characteristics of the cultural landscape of archaeological sites of Dollkeim-Kovrovo (Sambian-Natangian) culture dating from the Roman Period. The study is based on a spatial analysis, and is built on the currently known information, drawn from prewar archives, publications, research from the second half of the 20th century, and on the results of field surveys conducted by the author. GIS-based techniques were applied. The archaeological sites from the Roman Period located on the eastern border of Dollkeim-Kovrovo Culture in the valleys of the River Pregolja and the River Dejma are the focus of attention. In order to carry out a comparative analysis, information on the burial grounds of the ‘cultural core’ on the Samland Peninsula is used. The spatial layout of the burial grounds and settlements is analysed. As a result, a pattern for the spatial evolution of Dollkeim-Kovrovo culture in the Roman Period and the testing of the hypothesis of the existence of ‘contact zones’ in the West Balt cultural circle are proposed for consideration.

Viešvilė cemetery, situated in the Jurbarkas district (the lower Nemunas region in Lithuania), belongs to the Scalvian Baltic ethnocultural group and has been investigated for the last six years. The site contains archaeological material characteristic of ninth to 11th-century Scalvians. The research material gathered during the excavations would allow us to state that those who were buried in the cemetery were related to a dominant part of Scalvian society of that time.