Regional Formation and Development Studies

The methodological approaches of determining of living standard in regions are presented in this article. Studies of living standardare complex, and in order to compare regions, multivariate statistical methods are suggested for use. Other approaches may specifyand clarify the regional features of living standard. The regional cost of living surveys in Lithuania studies are not prevalent, but themethodology can be adapted to the Lithuanian case.

In this article there are being analyzed the natural and social economic structures of Lithuanian coastal strip. The research is based on survey about the hindrances and proposed suggestions for sustainable development. There are presented authors’ results about geographic profile of Lithuania’s coastal region, degree of exploitation and processes of spatial planning, suggestions for improvement of sustainable development of coastal strip. There are distinguished the types of bad examples as institutional, projects related, shortage of financial issues, private housing and the types of good examples as legislative, institutional, projects related, NGOs related for exploitation and sustainable development of coastal strip.

This article presents the review of the development of Lithuanian higher schools during the Soviet period. Chronological data of establishment and transformations of Lithuanian high-schools in 1940–1990 are presented, beginning with the Soviet occupation and ending with the Revival events. The article highlights the structure and specifics of Soviet Lithuanian high-schools, the content of specialists training, provisions of science and studies. Chronologically integral, comprehensive scientific works about higher education development in Soviet Lithuania have not been prepared yet. Most of the information about this period is provided by individual archival documents, Soviet periodical press, commemorative books, different high school publications on the history of their institution, as well as individual researchers memoirs, some features of the development of higher education are revealed in individual scientific works. This article provides an summarized material of various authors and sources and integral analysis of Lithuanian higher education during the Soviet period.

In the fifth to the eighth centuries, graves of well-armed men and their riding horses –or the ritual parts of horses– were spread throughout almost the entire mainland part of Lithuania and Latvia, or in the territory between the Nemunas and Daugava / Western Dvina Rivers. This was the northernmost part of Europe in which the custom had spread in the fifth to the eighth centuries. While the horsemen’s and horses’ burial customs varied in separate regions of the defined area, still everywhere the horseman and horse were interred in one grave pit, with the horse almost always to the person’s left. In their journey to the Afterlife, however, the bond between horseman and horse began to vary in the communities that lived in the more peripheral regions. The variety of burial customs was associated with differences in the communities’ social structure; these differences affected interment traditions and formed different burial rites. The custom that existed in the Roman Period on the littorals of Lithuania and Latvia to bury ritual horse parts (the head or head and legs) and spurs with armed men disappeared; here only bridle bits symbolized the horse in armed men’s graves in the fifth to the eighth centuries. Warriors’ graves with equestrian equipment spread throughout the entire region between the Nemunas and Daugava in the fifth to eighth centuries. With the change in burial customs (with the spread of cremation), and, apparently, in worldview, riding horse burials appeared that no longer could be associated with the concrete burials of people.

Estonian and Latvian small bone spades are discussed. The majority of spades are found in hill-forts and settlement sites from the 11th to the 13th centuries. The tools and technique of manufacture are investigated.