Klaipėdos universitetas

Important but up to now more or less unsolved questions of early Medieval archaeology focus on the date and the process of Slavonisation in the southwest Baltic area. The state of knowledge in various regions of northeast Germany and Poland lead to partly different research reviews, which in some cases even expressed opposing opinions. There are only a few absolute dates available indicating that the beginning of the Slavonic settlement can be dated to the late seventh and early eighth centuries, but how this process of slavonisation can be explained is still unknown. Did a new Slavonic community migrate into a devastated landscape, or was there a change of identity into a Slavonic way of life connected with continuous Germanic settlement? New interdisciplinary investigations of late Germanic and the earliest Slavonic settlements in northwest Poland focus on these questions. The aim of the research project is to obtain new references for continuities or discontinuities in the history of the settlement and the use of the landscape in the area of Pyrzyce, Western Pomerania, to explain processes of change from the sixth to the eighth century

This article discusses issues related to pile-dwelling settlements in Lithuania. It offers a detailed study of the archaeological and osteological material found at the Žemaitiškė 2 pile-dwelling settlement, as well as palynological and radiocarbon research into the settlement’s cultural layer. The article discusses the wood anatomy of pile-dwellings, their dendrochronological dating, and the types of construction material. The studies show that the construction of pile-dwellings in Lithuania began in the Late Neolithic Age, whereas the tradition of living on pile platforms existed throughout the Bronze Age.

In the Middle to Late Neolithic, pile-dwellings existed in Russia only in the Dnepr-Dvina basin and in the European region, in the Alpine zone, and probably in the western Baltic region. Investigations of sites in the Dnepr-Dvina region with underwater excavation methods have been conducted since the 1970s. The history of the development of these methods is presented here. The preliminary results of complex investigations of the Serteya II site are also covered in this article. An analysis of the remains of fauna, palynological analysis, and traceological analysis of bone tools, and modelling with GIS-technologies, allowed us to recreate the economic activities of the inhabitants of the Serteya II settlement. It had a complex character: it was a hunter-gatherer economy that existed alongside a small productive economy. The latter probably had a prestigious character, and did not play a significant role in the economy of ancient people. A comparison of data from typo-technological pottery inquiries with dendrochronological and radiocarbon dates allowed the determination of peculiarities of the material culture of every construction, and the distinguishing elements of local and newly arrived cultures. An analysis of types of wood allowed us to determine the areas of their origin, and to understand when and from what kind of forest repairs were made. Research shows that further investigation in this region will lead to uncovering other pile-dwellings.

The article examines trading conditions in medieval Klaipėda (Memel) and reports the results of the latest dendrochronological dating of oak found in the Old Town.