Journal:Archaeologia Baltica
Volume 8 (2007): Weapons, Weaponry and Man (In memoriam Vytautas Kazakevičius), pp. 58–68
Abstract
At the Early Roman Iron Age graveyard of Hagenow, Mecklenburg, five or six generations of an elite manifest rank and status through the burial custom, among other things using weapons and components of military equipment. The wealth and quality of the grave goods obvious based on the participation in Germanic retinues and also in Roman services.
Spurs are among the primary attributes of riders. Baltic spurs are distinctive, affected by their long development from the beginning of the first millennium to the late Middle Ages. Their genesis is linked to the local tradition of employment and the mismatch with typological frameworks of spurs discovered in other sites. Therefore, while analysing spurs discovered in the Žąsinas cemetery, a typological system had to be shaped, which could be applied to characterise all spurs of the above period discovered in Lithuania and the entire Baltic area.