Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)
Jašiūnų pilkapynas
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Overview
About this site
Overview
The Jašiūnų pilkapynas is a barrow cemetery in the Šalčininkai District Municipality of Lithuania, in the Jašiūnai forest beside the village of Jašiūnai. It is catalogued as a megalithic mound with integral stones. The cemetery comprises more than 100 mounds spread over an area of about 5 ha, and several of them have been investigated.
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Article
Jašiūnų pilkapynas
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Jašiūnų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Jašiūnų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
The mounds are 5–15 m in diameter and 0,5-2,5 m high. They are surrounded by ditches or by pits, and some have wreaths of stones. Part of the mounds have been damaged, and pits have been dug in them.
In 1938 the Archaeological Museum of Vilnius University, under Helena Cehak-Holubovičova, investigated 2 mounds.
ExcavationsSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Jašiūnų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Jašiūnų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
In 1938 the Archaeological Museum of Vilnius University, under Helena Cehak-Holubovičova, investigated 2 mounds. Between 2000 and 2004 Valdemaras Šimėnas investigated 5 more. Two of the mounds proved to be sites of hearths, and one was heaped up from burnt remains and is thought to have been a ritual place. Four mounds were empty.
FindsSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Jašiūnų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Jašiūnų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
One mound contained the bones of a burnt horse, together with bits, bells, iron bridle buckles and sickles.
DatingSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Jašiūnų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Jašiūnų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
The form of the mounds is characteristic of the seventh to the eighth centuries and of the ninth to the twelfth centuries.
ContextSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Jašiūnų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Jašiūnų 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 the monuments of this kind are mostly cemeteries of small mounds. They 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
- 2000
Vilniaus universiteto archeologinis muziejus (tyrimų vadovė Helena Cehak-Holubovičova) ištyrė 2, 2000–2004 m.
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
- 54°27′16″ N, 25°16′02″ EFor a GPS or map app: 54.45437, 25.26735
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)Skubėtų pilkapynas
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Senųjų Macelių pilkapynas
Mūrininkų pilkapiai- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Stakų pilkapynas
Grigiškių pilkapynas
Naujosios Vilnios pilkapynas
Sausių pilkapynas- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Didžiulių pilkapynas
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
1 source behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q12657414wikidata.org
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Jašiūnų 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): Jašiūnų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
- Wikidata Q12657414CC0