Archaeologia Baltica

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.

This article discusses issues related to pile-dwelling settlements in Lithuania. It offers a detailed study of the archaeological and osteological material found at the Žemaitiškė 2 pile-dwelling settlement, as well as palynological and radiocarbon research into the settlement’s cultural layer. The article discusses the wood anatomy of pile-dwellings, their dendrochronological dating, and the types of construction material. The studies show that the construction of pile-dwellings in Lithuania began in the Late Neolithic Age, whereas the tradition of living on pile platforms existed throughout the Bronze Age.

Between 2000 and 2010, the Asaviec 2 and Asaviec 7 settlements of Kryvina peatbog (Vitebsk region) were excavated. At Asaviec 2 the excavations concentrated on the northern part, where pure materials of Usvyatian culture were found, and also several fragments of a Globular Amphora culture vessel. The excavations of the new Asaviec 7 settlement (up till 2007) gave us pure materials of Northern Belarusian culture, too. Among them are bone, antler and flint items, made mainly according to local Neolithic traditions. There are two 14C dates for this settlement: 3770±90 ВР and 3870±40 ВР.

During excavations at the cemetery at Zvejnieki in northern Latvia in the 1960s and 1970s, more than 300 graves were excavated. At new excavations from 2005 to 2009, a double grave was found. Burial 316, a female, had an arrangement of amber pendants from the waist to the knee, while Burial 317, a male, had some beads around the head and around the lower legs. The double grave 316–317 proved to be the most richly furnished grave in the cemetery in terms of amber pendants. It has been dated to about 4000 calibrated BC. The double grave is located in the eastern part of the cemetery, where other graves of the same age with amber objects were situated.

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.