Klaipėdos universitetas

The Virumaa province in northeast Estonia is the area with the biggest concentration of ‘Hanseatic bowl’ finds in Europe. The finds originate mostly from deposits, often consisting of sets of numerous items. This article suggests a connection between these finds and the Danish crusade to Estonia in 1219, interpreting the bowls as the king’s gift to new subjects for their loyalty, also looking at a possible broader context, and drawing hypothetical parallels with the Danish crusade to Samland and Prussia in 1210.

Viljandi (Fellin), a small town in medieval Livonia, was founded in the second quarter of the 13th century, soon after the Estonian Crusades. The Estonians’ prehistoric hill-fort was replaced by a castle of the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order, the prehistoric settlement was abandoned, and the location for the new town was chosen on the site of a former field more suitable for fortification. In this paper, zooarchaeological material from three sites, the prehistoric settlement, the Order’s castle and the early medieval town, will be discussed. Despite the presumed changes in Estonian society associated with the Crusades, the analyses reveal no profound differences in meat consumption in the transitional period from prehistory to the middle Ages.