Archaeologia Baltica

The paper deals with the problem of Slovak image abroad. Slovakia is a small country in terms of population and geographical size and despite its natural beauties and positive economic development it does not draw enough attention. The paper describes two main approaches to nation branding and outlines several typical branding strategies of chosen Eastern European countries. As there is a strong correlation between the image of Slovakia and Eastern Europe, the paper also studies the common characteristics of Eastern Europe image with specific focus on its reflection in popular culture. The final part of the paper summarises basic characteristics of the image of Slovakia in foreign press and briefly presents a new Slovak branding campaign Good Idea Slovakia.

The recent intensification of AMS 14C assays of bone and antler artefacts in the east and southeast

The German army entered the Russian Empire in the spring of 1915, and by the autumn it had occupied most of the territory on which later the independent state of Lithuania was founded. For almost three years, from the autumn of 1915, the area was governed by the Supreme Commander in the East (Oberbefehlshaber Ost), i.e. military administration. Mainly on the basis of the newspapers published in the Ober Ost area in the years of the First World War, as well as other sources, the author seeks to show how German soldiers, and Germans in a broader sense, saw the area of the prospective Lithuania and its population that it occupied in 1915. The paper analyses the impression the land and its inhabitants made on German soldiers and commentators, and examines how those impressions combined with previous ideas about Eastern Europe.

The East Baltic Stone Age is well known for its rich array of bone and antler artefacts. The collections consist of stray finds as well as inventory from stratified settlement sites. Seven hunting and fishing tool complexes, made from bone and antler, were singled out in Latvia, characterising each stage of the Baltic Stone Age. The oldest of these complexes was formed at the very end of the Late Glacial period when the ice sheet retreated and the conditions for human habitation were created. This complex consists of 18 bone and antler artefacts, harpoons of archaic forms and spearheads, found in Latvia and Lithuania. Unfortunately, they are all stray finds and determined as Late Palaeolithic only typologically. Harpoons in similar morphological forms are known from all of northwest and Central Europe, associated with Late Palaeolithic reindeer hunter cultures. Some of the finds were made from reindeer antler. The new carbon 14 data of reindeer bones, obtained in Helsinki University by H. Jungner, testified to the presence of reindeer in the Eastern Baltic from Alleröd times till the beginning of the Preboreal climatic period.

In the light of the present findings from Pagóry Chełmskie the flint deposited on the surface occurs in two types. One type often resembles the shaft varieties from Volhynia, Podolia and Volhynian Polesie, or even Podlasie. Most Final Palaeolithic finds represent the settlements of cultures with point-tools tradition, mostly Swiderian Culture, some of them are connected with an undetermined culture with backed points, one site with the inventories of Magdalenian Culture.