Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)
Gedžiūnėlių pilkapynas
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Overview
About this site
Overview
The Gedžiūnėliai barrow cemetery (Gedžiūnėlių pilkapynas), also called the Garšvinė barrow cemetery, lies in the Ignalina district municipality of Lithuania, west of Gedžiūnėliai and north-east of the village of Garšvinė (Kazitiškis eldership), in forest on both sides of the road Seniškis–Daržininkai. It is the largest barrow cemetery in Lithuania, occupying an area of 40 ha.
About 560 barrows survive over 33 ha.
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Article
Gedžiūnėlių pilkapynas
Some mounds are elongated, 8 to 10 up to 14 to 16 m long and 4 to 7 m wide, and are surrounded by elongated pits.
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Gedžiūnėlių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Gedžiūnėlių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
The barrows are set 5 to 25 m from one another over an area of about 30 ha. Their mounds are 6 to 12 m in diameter, some 14 to 18 m, and 0.3 to 1.5 m high. Most are surrounded by pits or encircled by ditches. Some mounds are elongated, 8 to 10 up to 14 to 16 m long and 4 to 7 m wide, and are surrounded by elongated pits. Barrows that once stood in village fields were destroyed by ploughing.
Research historySources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Gedžiūnėlių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Gedžiūnėlių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Reconnaissance investigations were carried out in 1958 by archaeologists of the Institute of History, and in 1976, 1978 and 1985 by archaeologists of the Scientific Methodological Council for the Protection of Cultural Monuments. Finds of the 6th to 12th centuries were collected from damaged barrows and are held by the National Museum of Lithuania. The Kazlupiškė hillfort lies 1.45 km to the south-west.
ConservationSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Gedžiūnėlių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Gedžiūnėlių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
In 2003 part of the barrows was dug up by vandals using metal detectors to search for ancient finds.
ContextSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Gedžiūnėlių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Gedžiūnėlių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
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 cemeteries of this kind are barrow cemeteries and 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
From the article
Dated moments in the story
- 560 CE
Pilkapyne 33 ha teritorijoje išliko apie 560 pilkapių; buvę kaimo laukuose sunaikinti ariant.
Source
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.
Where it stands
Lithuania
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 55°27′00″ N, 26°18′50″ EFor a GPS or map app: 55.45000, 26.31389
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.
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Gedžiūnų pilkapynas
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Dvarykščiaus pilkapynas
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Laukstenių pilkapynas
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Опса
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Gailiutiškės pilkapynas
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Salako pilkapynas
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Вусце (курганны могільнік)
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Kretuonų pilkapynas
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
1 source behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q12655117wikidata.org
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Gedžiūnėlių 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