Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

This article addresses some methodological problems related to the mapping out of cultural data and more specifically those related to so-called cultural borders and boundaries in space. The second part of the article is devoted to the Mediterranean region. For half a century, this region has been the locus of much anthropological fieldwork, and has also provoked much debate on the topic of the region surrounding a closed sea as a conceptual entity. As both the Baltic and the Mediterranean seas have been spaces of intense human relations rather than obstacles for exchange, a future anthropological comparison between these two areas may prove stimulating.