Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)
Baublių pilkapynas
Photo Julius Kanarskas · CC BY-SA 3.0Source file on Wikimedia Commons
Overview
About this site
Overview
The Baubliai barrow cemetery (Baublių pilkapynas) lies in the south of Kretinga district municipality, Lithuania, at Baubliai (Žalgiris elderate), beside Stadiono street on the left bank of the Minija. It is a state-protected cultural property (unique code 16134).
A trial excavation in 1977 found the remains of heavily damaged barrows with cremation graves dated to the 3rd-2nd century BC. The cemetery belongs to the West Baltic barrow culture.
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Article
Baublių pilkapynas
The edges are overgrown with trees and bushes, and pits of former potato cellars dug there in the twentieth century can be seen on the surface.
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Baublių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Baublių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
The barrows were built on an elongated hillock, 80 m long, 30 m wide and 2.0-3.5 m high, running north to south. The edges are overgrown with trees and bushes, and pits of former potato cellars dug there in the twentieth century can be seen on the surface. The protected area is 0.98 ha.
Research historySources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Baublių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Baublių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
The site was identified in 1974 by Milda Jablonskytė of the Kretinga Museum. In 1982 it was surveyed by the Scientific Methodological Council for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, led by Romas Olišauskas, and mapped by the aerial survey institute of the USSR ministry of agriculture. In 1992 it was surveyed by the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Research Centre, led by Vilnius Morkūnas, and mapped by the State Land Management Institute.
ExcavationsSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Baublių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Baublių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
In 1977 Ignas Jablonskis investigated an area of 94 m² and found the remains of heavily damaged barrows with cremation graves of the 3rd-2nd century BC. A barrow consisted of a wreath of stones with an earth mound heaped over it, and the stones of the wreaths lay on undisturbed ground. No undestroyed graves were found. In the trenches, scattered cremated bones, soot and urn sherds were found. It is thought that the remains of the cremated dead were placed in urns or small pits. The urns were of hand-formed clay, up to 20 cm in diameter, with smooth and rough surfaces. Among the potsherds a pair of stone grinders was found. The finds are kept in the Kretinga Museum.
ConservationSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Baublių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Baublių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
The cemetery was declared an archaeological monument of local significance (AV1935) in 1978, entered in the list of archaeological sites of the register of immovable cultural property (A1718) in 2003, and recognised as a state-protected cultural property in 2005.
ContextSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Baublių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Baublių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
The cemetery belongs to the West Baltic barrow culture area and lies on the eastern edge of the West Lithuanian barrow area. Barrow cemeteries of this kind are not megaliths.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
Baltic barrow cemeteries
Along the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic, burial mounds mark the territories of the Baltic peoples. In Lithuanian they are called pilkapiai, and the Atlas's Lithuanian and Belarusian records are mostly cemeteries of small mounds recorded in national registers. They are barrow cemeteries and not megaliths.
The deepest root of the tradition is the West Baltic barrow culture of the early Iron Age, from which most of the Western Baltic culture arose. That culture, of the Bronze Age and Iron Age along the southern coast of the Baltic, was ethnically Baltic and shared similar monuments and funeral rites; its tribes included the Old Prussians, Galindians, Yotvingians and Skalvians. Further north, the Curonians, a medieval Baltic tribe of the fifth to sixteenth centuries CE, lived on the coast of what are now western Latvia and Lithuania, and their neighbours the Samogitians lived inland to the east. Mounds of the broader barrow tradition, the kurgans, had spread into eastern and northern Europe as early as the third millennium BCE.
Because a cemetery is made up of many small mounds, it records an ordinary community and not a single ruler. Many of these mounds have not been excavated, so the Atlas gives them a broad range and does not claim a date.
When visiting, look for a group of small round mounds under trees or on a river terrace, and note how the mounds are laid out along the terrace or ridge.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Western Baltic culture, Wikipedia: Curonians, Wikipedia: Samogitians, Wikipedia: Kurgan, Wikipedia: Tumulus · CC BY-SA 4.0
See it in 3D
An interpretive reconstruction of the monument, standing on the real ground at its exact point, under the sun for that place and season. Drag to look around it.
The reconstruction is ours, not a survey: it shows what a monument of this type looks like, at the size the record gives for this one.
Photographs
1 photograph, each with its author and licence
Where it stands
Lithuania
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 55°49′58″ N, 21°23′45″ EFor a GPS or map app: 55.83274, 21.39573
Access is as our sources describe it; we have not visited the site to check.
Nearby
The closest sites in the Atlas, by straight line.
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
1 source behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q12650538wikidata.org
Image files
- Baublių pilkapynas 2013.JPGJulius KanarskasCC BY-SA 3.0
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Baublių pilkapynas" (Lithuanian), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; authors are listed in the page history. Reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikipedia · Edit history and authors
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Baublių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
- Wikidata Q12650538CC0