Klaipėdos universitetas

The first written mention in historical sources of the name of Žemaitija (or Samogitia), the west Lithuanian region, is well-known. In 1219, the Hypatian Codex described how Žemaitijan dukes, along with Lithuanian dukes, made peace with Volhynia. Much less is known about the emergence of the name of Žemaitija on ancient maps, despite the fact that old cartography often provides the first records of various geographical, socio-cultural and socio-economic phenomena. The article not only tries to trace the first appearance of the name Samogitia on maps, but also discusses its various forms and transformations, explaining the motives behind choices of particular forms of the name. The author examines nearly all the maps created before the early 19th century as cartographic sources. For the classification of this volume of material, she uses the concept of the three-stage cartographic depiction of Lithuania proposed by Vaclovas Chomskis. More than 200 maps of different scales and representing different areas, including Lithuania, Lithuania and neighbouring countries, Lithuania and Poland, Europe, Prussia, etc, were researched in order to track the use of different names for Žemaitija.

The authors discuss archaeological data regarding cultural interactions between west Lithuanian areas and the regions of Masuria and Suwałki during the Roman and Migration Periods. Several categories of finds in west Lithuania can be seen as direct imports or the import of ideas from the West Balt area in Masuria. This communication worked in both directions. influences from coastal Lithuania may also be detected in the style of jewellery or riding gear. undoubtedly, the warrior elite played an important role in keeping these connections alive. The west Lithuanian area, like Samland, was a trading centre, working as an intermediary in the dissemination of interregional novelties.

The paper analyses the impact of his interest in 19th-century East Prussian ethnic culture on the activities of Richard Jepsen Dethlefsen (1864–1944), one of the pioneers of monument protection in the region. Dethlefsen’s important activity in the area of recording and protecting the East Prussian cultural heritage also implied an acquaintance with the cultural values of Prussian Lithuania, whose roots were formed by the Reformation in the Duchy of Prussia; by Romanticism, which actualised the history of Prussia and the Prussian tribes; and a few other factors. Despite the impact of nationalism paradigms in the German Empire in the late 19th century, Dethlefsen’s activities contributed to the understanding of the intentions of his contemporaries to consider East Prussia as a unique cultural space, whose historical conditions predetermined the survival of the uniqueness of several ethnic regions, by emphasising it as a value of the East Prussian province to be protected. The concept of pluriculturalism of the former East Prussia, as revealed in Dethlefsen’s work, remains a relevant guideline for cultural heritage policy in west Lithuania (the former Klaipėda region).

The Ėgliškiai-Anduliai cemetery is the largest Curonian burial site ever researched. However, during the Second World War this cemetery’s artefacts and archival material were scattered throughout museums, archives and various institutions in several countries. In this article, the authors present an intricate reconstruction of this burial monument based only on the surviving archival material of the research by German archaeologists, and only on a small collection of artefacts, as well as the research by Lithuanian archaeologists in recent years.