Archaeologia Baltica

The present article presents analysis of the dances Heiduka and Szala rutele of the inhabitants of the Lithuania Minor described by Matas Pretorijus in the 17th century. The article discusses the parallels between the dances hereinabove with the later variants of these dances described in the territory of the Lithuania Minor – in Klaipėda region and a certain part of Königsberg area (current Kaliningrad Oblast) – and in Samogitia in the 17–20th centuries. The interrelationship and change of the purpose, forms and figures of dances are analyzed.

The present paper is focused on the specific treatment of the sea topic in the Latvian writer Egons Līvs’ prose fiction. His works are focused on people who are related to the sea – fishermen and their families. Using the methodology of semiotics, two major variants of actualizing the sea topic in E. Līvs’ prose fiction are singled out: (1) the sea as a space of the rite of initiation, (2) the existential sea that preserves or takes one’s life. Within each of these thematic groups, one work by the writer is analyzed, emphasizing the specificity of the sea topic in it and characterizing the significance of the sea in the revelation of the conception of human and the construction of the world model. The literary and biographical contexts are briefly characterized by means of the biographical and anthropological methods.

Several Estonian burial places with cremations were investigated in the period 1997 to 2011. During the research, various descriptive and metric data on cremated bone materials was observed. The present paper is an attempt to systematise and interpret the data collected, in order to provide some generalisations on Estonian cremations. A comparative study of graves on the basis of the minimum number of buried individuals and the number of determined bone finds in graves, as well as bone fragmentation, is presented. Radiocarbon dating (AMS method) of burnt human bones from six investigated graves was conducted in order to specify the usage time of the graves. Some conclusions on possible temporal changes and cultural differences in burial practices are made on the basis of these characteristics.