Giedrė Piličiauskienė

Vilnius University · Department of Archeology

The archaeological record of the mid-1st millennium AD in Lithuania reveals marked changes in culture and influences from various regions of Europe, which are typically attributed to immigration. To assess the immigration hypothesis and mobility, we carried out ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr analysis on human teeth (n = 40) from 11 cemeteries. Samples were selected to...

Darbe pristatomas tyrimas, kuriame siekiama įvertinti Vėlyvojo Romėniškojo laikotarpio – Tautų kraustymosi laikotarpio (III–VII a.) žmonių ir žirgų mobilumą bei galimą imigraciją ir mobilumą Lietuvoje, remiantis stroncio (87Sr/86Sr) stabiliųjų izotopų analize. Tyrimo metu atlikti 40-ies žmonių dantų iš 11-os pilkapynų ir kapinynų bei 13-os arklių i...

This paper integrates archaeological, environmental and isotopic data from Roman Iron Age (1–400 AD) settlements in Lithuania to present an updated framework for understanding the development of farming and agricultural landscapes during this period. The study dates the introduction of new crop species, such as rye and oats, to around 100–200 cal A...

Animal scapulae bearing distinct holes (in some cases, even more than one or two) have been found in several European prehistoric sites and have mainly been associated with the hunter-gatherer-fisher communities. The genesis of such holes is usually interpreted unambiguously, i.e. they are considered to be associated with hunting, during which the...

This study examines the archaeobotanical assemblages from Kernavė, an extensively studied archaeological site in the southeastern Baltic region, known for its cultural landscape reflecting millennia of human activity. The paper combines archaeobotanical data and radiocarbon dates collected over the last decade of systematic research to reconstruct...

The article presents the preliminary results of the traceological analysis of the collection of wooden pestles obtained during excavations of the complex of subneolithic sites in Šventoji in Lithuania. During the studies, an attempt was made to assess the possibility of interpreting the functions of the analysed tools based on the (prob-ably) funct...

The article presents the preliminary results of the traceological analysis of the collection of wooden pestles obtained during excavations of the complex of subneolithic sites in Šventoji in Lithuania. During the studies, an attempt was made to assess the possibility of interpreting the functions of the analysed tools based on the (probably) functi...

The article can be downloaded here: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1j5ef,rVDBjZTr This article attempts to verify the possibility of studying the mobility patterns of prehistoric communities based on the technological features of the artefacts, identified through traceological analyses. The research subject were animal tooth pendants from several...

This article presents the results of research that focused on the nutrition and related health issues of medieval and early modern dogs found in the territory of present-day Lithuania. In this study, we present bone collagen carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope ratios for seventy-five dogs recovered from seven sites which were dated back to th...

The multi-millenia long history between dogs and humans has justly placed them at the forefront of archeological and genomic research. Despite ongoing efforts including the analysis of ancient dog and wolf genomes, many questions remain regarding their geographic and temporal origins, and the microevolutionary processes that led to the huge diversi...

Remnants of what was believed to be a single baby crocodile, originating from ancient Egypt and curated in the National Museum of Lithuania, have been recently assessed using noninvasive and nondestructive techniques. These had been donated in 1862 to the then Museum of Antiquities by the prominent Polish-Lithuanian collector Count Michał Tyszkiewi...

In this study, 71 human individuals were subjected to stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope analysis of bone collagen samples for the purpose of determining human dietary patterns in Lithuania during the Late Roman and Migration periods. More specifically, based on the isotopic data, the aim was to determine and evaluate any potential di...

This paper presents the findings of a research project aimed at reconstructing the subsistence economy of the Late Bronze Age communities in eastern Lithuania. We focused on examining archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological assemblages from three hillforts alongside δ 13 C and δ 15 N stable isotope analysis of plant and animal remains. Our results s...

This paper presents the first results of both dryland and underwater investigations at the multi-period Garnys riverine site situated on the Žeimena River in eastern Lithuania. There, during 2017–2020 a professional diver and amateur archaeologist collected hundreds of Mesolithic-Neolithic archaeological finds made of wood, bone, antler, stone, and...

Until relatively recently, stable sulphur isotope analysis of bone collagen was seldom undertaken in bioarchaeological research. With increasing frequency, its application has proven useful in reconstructing palaeodiets and palaeoecologies, as well as identifying potential migration and mobility patterns. Here, sulphur (δ34S) isotope analysis, toge...

In 2020, the construction of a pipeline led to a rescue archaeological excavation at the 130–240 cal AD Roman Iron Age settlement site near Skudeniai. The discovered material from its brief occupation has provided substantial new data on unenclosed settlements in the Late Striated Ware Culture. The distinct posthole accumulations in the surveyed ar...

A set (n = 37) of new human bone radiocarbon accelerator mass spectrometry ( ¹⁴ C AMS) dates from 11 Lithuanian Late Roman Period–Migration Period cemeteries is presented and discussed in the light of the established schemes of archaeological chronology. The focus of the paper is on the burials of the military and social elite, which indicate the e...

The article discusses artefacts made of osseous materials found in the Late Bronze Age fortified settlement sites in north-eastern Lithuania. Earlier, Bronze Age bone items from three Lithuanian sites – Narkūnai, Nevieriškė and Ke­reliai – have been analysed more thoroughly. Of sites discussed here, Sokiškiai has been archaeologically investigated...

The economic model of the Lithuanian Late Bronze Age (1100–500 cal BC) has long been based on zooarchaeological collections from unstratified, multi-period settlements, which have provided an unreliable understanding of animal husbandry and the role of fishing and hunting. The opportunity to re-evaluate the previously proposed dietary and subsisten...

In 2020, rescue excavations due to construction of a pipeline connecting Poland and Lithuania took place at the Bronze Age sites Tarbiškės 1 and Tarbiškės 2, eastern Lithuania, both dated to 1050-900 cal BC. They revealed a rather homogeneous archaeological assemblage which fills a gap in the development of the Bronze Age culture and economy in the...

This paper focuses on the 1224 bird remains found during the excavations of 1990–2015 in the Vilnius Lower Castle, Lithuania. The faunal material originates from a wide time span of the 13th to the 19th centuries. To explore the bird consumption in different periods of occupation of the castle and between different social strata, we analysed the bi...

The tradition of burying horses in Lithuania lasted from the Early Roman period until the late 14th C AD. It was the longest-lasting custom in Europe, which has left about 2000 known horse burials. This paper publishes the osteometric data and age of horses found in Lithuanian cemeteries and castles of the 3rd–14th C AD, over 200 individuals in tot...

In this study we present new carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) stable isotope data of human (n=13) and animal (n=40) bone and/or dentine collagen samples, alongside accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS 14C) dates of human remains (n=16). The studied material was sampled from Lithuanian sites dating from the Late Mesolithic to the pre-Roma...

We measured 87 Sr/ 86 Sr for all available human remains (n = 40) dating from the Mesolithic to the Bronze Age (ca. 6400–800 cal BC) in Lithuania. In addition, local baselines of archaeological fauna from the same area were constructed. We identified significant and systematic offsets between 87 Sr/86 Sr values of modern soils and animals and archa...

Abstract: In this paper, we present the 87Sr/86Sr data of 13 samples from horses from six Lithuanian burial sites dating from the 3rd to the 7th C AD. Alongside these data, we also publish the bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr data of 15 Lithuanian archaeological sites, based on 41 animals which enabled the construction of a reliable baseline for the Southeas...

Whilst the analysis of strontium isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr) of human remains enables mobility patterns and migration events to be identified archaeologically, its potential is dependent on the heterogeneity of the underlying geology in the research area, and the knowledge of 87Sr/86Sr ratio variation in the biologically available strontium. In Lith...

Until presently, over 60 trilobate arrowheads characteristic of Asian nomads have been found in Lithuanian hillforts or their adjacent settlements, some of them in destruction layers. These finds encouraged Lithuanian archaeologists to create a narrative about the Huns severely raiding into the region in the 5th century AD. However, it is accepted...

Human relations to wild animals have gone through multiple transformations in Northern Europe (understood in wide geographic terms). From the Bronze Age onwards, wild animals played only a minor, if any, role for human subsistence. How did this influence the perception of wild animals? And if not for food, for what reasons were they hunted? Are the...

In the present study we review the questions of how and from where western European animal husbandry innovations, of which the most important were the larger and more productive Dutch cattle, spread to Lithuania in the early seventeenth century. Most of the information revealing this process came from historical sources, although we also sought clu...

In recent years Lithuanian archaeologists have become greatly more aware of and interested in the information provided by faunal remains. Its potential has begun to draw the attention of researchers from nature sciences, while the archaeologists working in the field collect faunal remains uncovered during excavations and hand them over for storage...

In this paper, we examine archaeological bird remains from Klaipėda Castle (Ger. Memel), western Lithuania. The castle was built in 1252, and during the Middle Ages, it was the northernmost castle of the Teutonic Order in Prussia. The castle together with its adjacent town were subjected to wars and changing political situations over the centuries,...

This article presents the results of traceological analyses of bone points and harpoon heads discovered at hunter-gatherer-fisher sites 1, 3, 4, 6 and 23 in Šventoji, coastal Lithuania, c. 3500–2700 cal BC. The data obtained through the studies were used to interpret technological processes and operational chains resulting from the production of th...

The full version of the article can be downloaded from here for 50 days: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1b-1C,rVDBVSge Abstract: The starting point for the studies described in the article were the results of traceological studies of a collection of seal craniums discovered during archaeological excavations at a Subneolithic site complex in Švent...

In 2015, professional diver and amateur archaeologist A. Matiukas discovered an extraordinarily rich and well-preserved underwater multi-period archaeological site, Kaltanėnai, at the point where the Žeimenys Lake feeds into the Žeimena River in East Lithuania. Over the duration of three years of multiple diving expeditions, he collected ca. 800 ar...

The harp seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus), today a subarctic species with breeding populations in the White Sea, around the Jan Mayen Islands and Newfoundland, was a common pinniped species in the Baltic Sea during the mid-and late Holocene. It is puzzling how an ice dependent species could breed in the Baltic Sea during the Holocene Thermal Maximum...

This study presents the results of stable isotope analyses performed on human tooth enamel (δ13C), bone collagen (δ13C and δ15N), and animal bone and tooth dentine collagen (δ13C and δ15N). We sampled archaeological material from Late Roman and Early Migration period settlement and burial sites in western Lithuania. Stable isotope analysis of human...

Coastal residents are quite often expected to consume a significant amount of aquatic resources, though historical evidence often reveals a rather complex diet. To better understand the actual consumption and the distribution of various foods, stable isotope (δ13C and δ15N) analyses were employed to skeletal remains from three coastal communities,...

The aim of the research focuses on reconstructing diet of the seventeenth–eighteenth century Basilian monks who were buried in the crypt beneath the Holy Trinity Uniate Church in Vilnius, Lithuania. For this aim, stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope analyses of human bone collagen samples (n = 74, of which 39 yielded reliable isotopic d...

This article presents the results of traceological studies of ornaments observed on selected prehistoric osseous products from Poland and Lithuania. Included are unique artefacts from this region dated to the Late Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic, or which are connected to Subneolithic communities. The article presents the results of analyses...

This article presents the results of a zooarchaeological, technological and functional analysis of a collection of animal tooth pendants from the Subneolithic sites in Šventoji, Lithuania. The technological research carried out on the artefacts showed minimal interference in the material and the use of three basic techniques for drilling the holes....

Šventoji 43 is one of 8 Comb Ware culture sites known in Lithuania at the present. The site was excavated in 2013-2014 and revealed a homogenic pottery assemblage which was classified as typical Comb Ware and radiocarbon dated to 3900-3650 cal BC. It seems that Comb Ware is the oldest pottery type to have been produced in coastal Lithuania. Šventoj...

Šventoji 2/4, which is situated on the Lithuanian coast, is among the most important East Baltic Stone Age sites due to the extraordinary preservation of archaeological finds in waterlogged gyttja and due to extensive excavations ongoing since 1967. This paper presents the results of excavations in 2014 and subsequent laboratory analyses. This new...

Among the rich collection of osseous artefacts found in the Subneolithic and Neolithic levels from archaeological sites in Šventoji (Lithuania), a small fragment of a bone harpoon head is particularly interesting. The characteristics of the use-wear traces that were identified on the artefact suggest that the piece was reused as a kind of grinding...

Much bone and antler working debris was found from the territory of the Vilnius Castle complex. The bone working debris is rather standardised; most common are sawn off epiphyses of metapodials. Cattle bones prevail among the working waste, metatarsals being much more numerous than metacarpals. Antler working waste is not as standardised as the bon...

With the arrival of the Early Neolithic Globular Amphora and CordedWare cultures into the southeastern Baltic, ca. 2900/2800–2400 cal BC, a new type of economy was introduced, animal husbandry. However, the degree to which this transformed the subsistence economy is unknown. Here, we conducted organic residue analyses of 64 ceramic vessels to ident...

During the excavations carried out at the complex of Subneolitic-Neolithic sites in Šventoji, coastal Lithuania (sites 1, 4, 6 and 23), 27 unique bone products have been discovered. Due to the character of the use-wear and technological traces which are macroscopically readable on their surface they have been defined as scrapers. Dated to ca. 3000...

Climate warming and human landscape transformation during the Holocene resulted in environmental changes for wild animals. The last remnants of the European Pleistocene megafauna that survived into the Holocene were particularly vulnerable to changes in habitat. To track the response of habitat use and foraging of large her-bivores to natural and a...

To date, no zooarchaeological or historical research on the consumption of fish in Lithuania in the Middle Ages or the Early Modern Period has been conducted. Over the period in question, Christian traditions were established in Lithuania; therefore, fish must have become an important part of people’s nutrition, and especially in the elite diet. Du...

With the arrival of the Early Neolithic Globular Amphora and CordedWare cultures into the southeastern Baltic, ca. 2900/2800–2400 cal BC, a new type of economy was introduced, animal husbandry. However, the degree to which this transformed the subsistence economy is unknown. Here, we conducted organic residue analyses of 64 ceramic vessels to ident...

European bison ( Bison bonasus ) are the largest endemic vertebrates in Europe, and one of the few megafaunal species to have survived the mass megafaunal extinction during the Pleistocene/Holocene transition (12-9 thousand years ago). Untangling their evolutionary history would provide valuable information about the response of European megafauna...

During the excavations carried out at the complex of subneolitic sites in Sventoji, Lithuania (sites 1, 4, 6 and 23), 25 extremely interesting bone products has been discovered. Due to the characteristic of the use-wear and technological traces, which are macroscopically readable on their surface they were defined as "scrapers". Those dated ca. 300...

Environmental changes related to forest expansion and later to agricultural development and deforestation during the Holocene in Europe have strongly shaped herbivore distribution and habitat selection, leading to species extinction. In this paper, we examine, through dental microwear textural analysis, the foraging habitats, dietary flexibility an...

Among the finds from the Vilnius Castle complex and the Palace of Grand Dukes of Lithuania were some toiletry implements and a few fragments of unique accessories made from osseous materials. Quite a large proportion of these artefacts are made from exotic materials, mostly elephant ivory. Although a large amount of bone and antler working waste ha...

We present 9 accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dates and 41 carbon and nitrogen stable isotope measurements on bone and tooth collagen from the Šventoji Subneolithic/Neolithic sites and the Benaičiai cemetery, both in NW Lithuania. These data have led to a revised chronology and to the creation of a comprehensive stable isotope baseline for the S...

Our knowledge of the timing and completeness of the transition from foraging, fishing and hunting to food production in boreal northeastern Europe is far from clear. Here, we present new bone collagen AMS 14C dates, and δ13C and δ15N isotope values for 20 humans and 17 animals from a 6500-year period dating from the Late Mesolithic to the Bronze Ag...

Contemporary Lithuania, an area of the Balt cultures, is the northernmost region where burials, dated from the late second to the late seventh century ad , have been found with selected parts or whole bodies of horses. This study presents new information about these burials based on a multidisciplinary—archaeological, zooarchaeological, and chronol...

The paper presents a critical review of the zooarchaeological, macrobotanical, palynological and archaeological data from Lithuania and their previous interpretations, which formerly served as the basis for the concept of development of pre-Neolithic or Subneolithic low intensity farming and/or livestock breeding in the eastern Baltic region. Moreo...

The Šventoji sites are the best known Neolithic sites on the west coast of Lithuania. During the excavations numerous bone and antler artefacts and working debris were found. Most bone tools found at Šventoji could be dated to the period between 3500-2500 cal BC and come from the sites of Narva and Globular amphora cultures. The authors have studie...

Middle and Late Neolithic (4200–2000 cal BC) of the Lithuanian coast are well known because of dozens of sites that have been investigated and are still being investigated in the environs of the Šventoji settlement as well as on the Curonian Spit. On the contrary, very few Late Mesolithic (7000–5300 cal BC) and Early Neolithic (5300–4200 cal BC) si...

This work’s aim is, based of the investigation of zooarchaeological material, to survey the nature and development of the nutrition and husbandry of Žagarė II hillfort and settlement and Senoji Žagarė manor during the 12th–17th c. and to evaluate the osteometric data for their animals. 2440 animal bones collected during the 2009–2010 and 2012 excav...