Klaipėdos universitetas

The Early Bronze Age in Lithuania, and especially the final part, saw the most important changes in the structure of the

The aim of this article is to update the data on the research into Palanga settlement carried out in 1958, the objectives being to publish the discovered material to its full extent, to determine the lithological and cultural layers of the settlement, and to determine the cultural dependence of the communities that lived there. The following are used in the article: archaeological, osteological and macrobotanical material, which is kept at Kretinga Museum and which has not been published till now; stratigraphy of geological strata obtained during the drilling of geological boreholes; and radiocarbon dating of peat from the cultural layer level. The natural and cultural landscape of the habitation period of Palanga Stone Age settlement is also presented.

At the end of the Neolithic and during the Early Bronze Age, trans-regional exchange networks were already functioning in Europe, many of them covering the entire continent. One consequence of them was the rise of multi-directional ties between groups, and exchange on a scale which transcended individual culture groups. One exchange route that was in existence at the end of the Neolithic was associated with the distribution of amber. It followed the line of the River Vistula, from the Bay of Gdańsk to its headwaters. During the Early Bronze Age, this situation underwent a change. Drawing on older and more recent findings from the Mazury Lake District, I have tried to make the case for the existence during this period of an alternative communication route which traversed the Mazury region of northeast Poland.

Analysis of the osteological and archaeological material discovered at the Early Bronze Age settlement of Kretuonas 1C suggests that the settlement’s hunted game and reared animals were slaughtered within the settlement, not far from the dwellings. We analyse the butchering technology of the Early Bronze Age based on Kretuonas 1C’s osteological material. The tools used for butchering and the macroscopic analysis of the slaughtered artiodactyls’ axial skeleton and long bones enabled an assessment of split bone in the butchering area, as well as of chop and cut marks acquired during the butchering process.

The horse bones found in Lithuanian habitation sites that date to the Late Neolithic and to the Early Bronze Age still do not indicate that these horses were ridden upon or used to plough the soil. However, horse bones have been found in Lithuanian territory only in those sites where bones of other animals that were domesticated have been found. This suggests that domesticated horses in Lithuania might have spread together with other domesticated animals by way of cultural diffusion during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age.