In Lithuania, iron smelting furnaces dating back to the Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period have been found in 20 places, not

withstanding that iron slag was found in numerous archaeological excavations concerning those periods. The discovered furnaces are positioned in three groups on the northeastern outskirts of a former settlement. The investigated iron smelting structures with a shaft furnace and a slag pit under a hearth could have been built in Lithuania from the first century BC to the fourth or fifth centuries AD. The fact that there are no iron artefacts in dozens of household pits may be explained by their small quantity and their high value, when things are not easily thrown out. A comparison of the pottery found in the settlement indicates that furnaces were built and used in the transitional period when coarse ceramics predominated: the fourth and fifth centuries were the boundary between the Late Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period.