Klaipėdos universitetas

During excavations at the cemetery at Zvejnieki in northern Latvia in the 1960s and 1970s, more than 300 graves were excavated. At new excavations from 2005 to 2009, a double grave was found. Burial 316, a female, had an arrangement of amber pendants from the waist to the knee, while Burial 317, a male, had some beads around the head and around the lower legs. The double grave 316–317 proved to be the most richly furnished grave in the cemetery in terms of amber pendants. It has been dated to about 4000 calibrated BC. The double grave is located in the eastern part of the cemetery, where other graves of the same age with amber objects were situated.

This article analyses symbolic horse burial rites in the East Lithuanian Barrow Culture of the tenth–eleventh centuries. Single imitative inhumations and cremations are the dominant forms of horse cenotaphs. A variety of group imitative burial forms also was practiced. Funerary rites for symbolic and actual horses were coexistent, and no chronological or spatial differences between them are observed. Grave goods in burials of symbolic horses indicate lower status. Imitative burials of horses were carried out by those who had no resources for the sacrifice of the animal itself as a grave good. The social implications of horse burials or symbolic burials gained substantiality along with growing military activity and social stratification.

The various ways of interpreting the meaning of battle-axes and swords as grave goods are discussed. Two Finnish Crusade Period (1050–1200AD) inhumation cemeteries (Kirkkomäki in Turku and Rikalanmäki in Halikko) are presented as a case study. Both swords and battle-axes in these cemeteries had several meanings: they were effective weapons, but also important symbols of the wealth and status of their owners and community. They also had other symbolic and magical dimensions, which were important in the burial ritual.

This article introduces rosette-headed pins found at Pavirvytė cemetery (in the Akmenė district) in the rich female grave 138. Rosette-headed pins were quite well known in Semigallia. However, most of the ornaments in this grave are more typical of Curonian culture than of the Semigallians. Some decorative elements or ideas probably penetrated from Curonia to Semigallia at the end of the 11th century.