Klaipėdos universitetas

The article is devoted to the archaeological discoveries in the former village of Perdollen. A flat

The emergence of Iron Age elites in the Baltic lands is discussed here in the context of western Lithuania, a region with local amber deposits and distant interregional connections, with reference to what is called the West Lithuanian Group, with cemeteries with stone circles. No interregional status symbols have been recorded in the area, but it is possible to identify local prestige goods, such as equestrian equipment, horse offerings, drinking horns and decorative belt sets (male indicators), and elaborate headdresses and necklaces, and splendid pectoral ornaments (female indicators). Precious imports and silver or silver-plated* ornaments are to be found in both male and female graves. The inhabitants of western Lithuania in the Roman and Early Migration periods differed according to their social status. It is possible to distinguish quite a large number of well-equipped graves, but no exceptionally rich ones. Local elites existed in certain small territorial communities, but there were no regional elites. The destroyed grave 31 at Baitai may be an exception to this rule: it presents a sign of the appearance of people of very high rank, a process which developed further in later periods.

The article presents the publication and an attempt at the analysis of the brooches from grave 165 of the Bol’shoe Isakovo (formerly Lauth) burial ground. These are special finds which produces pieces of animal-headed crossbow brooches of the Migration Period in Sambian-Natangian culture and the western Baltic region. Brooches from the grave of the Bol’shoe Isakovo burial ground should be one of the earliest examples of the animal style in the southeast Baltic, and an instance of contacts between northern Europe and the Sambian population in the Early Migration Period.