Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

The archaeological investigations of First World War sites that began in the United Kingdom at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries expanded the concept of Great War research, laid the foundations for the development of modern conflict archaeology, and shaped its theoretical and methodological approaches. In Lithuania, the sites of the First World War (1914–1918) and the Wars of Independence (1919–1920) have not attracted much interest among researchers, and there are almost no published studies to date. This article focuses on the legacy of the First World War and the Wars of Independence in Lithuania, for the first time providing an overview of the archaeological research carried out up to 2023 in trenches, battlefields, and sites of death and burial, analysing the context of the research and presenting its results. Drawing on the experience of the archaeology of the First World War in other countries, the author discusses the state of the research and its future prospects, and offers a definition of the archaeology of the First World War and the Wars of Independence in Lithuania.

In 1944, as the Eastern Front was approaching Lithuania, which was then still occupied by Nazi Germany, and the Red Army retook the country, a substantial number of civilians and former members of paramilitary organisations joined the armed resistance to sovietisation. For a long time, the history of the anti-Soviet armed resistance, or guerrilla war, in Lithuania has been told as a story of men, dominated by descriptions of their combat action and stories of the dead. The memories of women, mainly helpers and messengers, have been treated as a supplement to this image, but not as a formative factor. Insufficient attention has also been paid to the role of women who fought with weapons in their hands, and the narratives of those who acted simultaneously as partisans and wives and mothers. The aim of this article is to take a multifaceted look at the experiences of women who contributed to the armed anti-Soviet resistance in Lithuania. It aims to discuss the changing attitudes of the partisan leadership towards women’s participation in action, to show the diversity of female activity in the partisan war, and to reveal how their involvement in the war contributed to changes in their family roles.

The survey and excavation of bunkers and dug-outs from the anti-Soviet partisan war in Lithuania which started in 2010 was a turning point both in the research into guerrilla warfare and Lithuanian archaeology. The next decade was marked by an increasing number of surveys and excavations at Lithuanian guerrilla war sites, the expanded directions of research, and their dissemination both to scholarly and general audiences becoming an integral part of Lithuanian archaeology. The article outlines the research into guerrilla war sites that were conducted in Lithuania between 2010 and 2019, presents their results, and discusses the survey and excavation directions of bunkers, dug-outs and their surroundings, camps, battlefields, disposal sites, and other partisan war sites. The author outlines the changes that have taken place in the research into the partisan war, and discusses the significance of archaeological data and the future prospects of research into the anti-Soviet partisan war in Lithuania as a separate field of archaeology.