Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)
Laukstenių pilkapynas
No licensed photograph yetWe have no photograph we may publish for this site, so the interpretive 3D view leads instead.
Overview
About this site
Overview
Laukstenių pilkapynas is a barrow cemetery in Ignalina district municipality, Lithuania, in woodland about 1,2 km south of Laukstenių village (Kazitiškis eldership). It comprises 35 surviving barrows on both sides of a forest clearing.
Excavation in 2000-2001 examined three damaged barrows and the site of a presumed barrow. The investigated barrows are dated to the 7th and 8th centuries.
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Article
Laukstenių pilkapynas
Most are 5–7 m in diameter and 0,5-0,8 m high; some are 8–9 m in diameter and about 1 m high, and others are about 3 m in diameter and up to 0,3 m high.
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Laukstenių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Laukstenių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Thirty-five barrows survive on both sides of the clearing. Some are flattened or damaged, and pits have been dug into their mounds. Most are 5–7 m in diameter and 0,5-0,8 m high; some are 8–9 m in diameter and about 1 m high, and others are about 3 m in diameter and up to 0,3 m high.
The mounds are encircled by round and elongated ditches, and some barrows have stone wreaths, of which remains survive.
ExcavationsSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Laukstenių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Laukstenių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
In 2000-2001 Vida Kliaugaitė investigated three damaged barrows and the site of a presumed barrow. The dead had been cremated and buried in shallow pits, with or without grave goods. Goods were very scarce; a spindle whorl and a bronze spiral were found.
Layers of burnt remains were recorded in the mounds, which had been covered with stone wreaths. Oval pits containing stones surrounded the barrows, and around one barrow three pits filled with earth and burnt remains were found.
DatingSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Laukstenių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Laukstenių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
The form of the barrows and their mounds is characteristic of the middle and second half of the 1st millennium. The investigated barrows are dated to the 7th and 8th centuries.
ContextSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Laukstenių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Laukstenių pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Monuments of this kind in Lithuania are usually cemeteries of small mounds, called pilkapiai in Lithuanian, recorded in national registers. They are barrow cemeteries and not megaliths. The Western Baltic culture of the Bronze Age and Iron Age along the southern coast of the Baltic was ethnically Baltic, and its tribes included the Old Prussians, Galindians, Yotvingians and Skalvians.
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.
Where it stands
Lithuania
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 55°26′00″ N, 26°07′00″ EFor a GPS or map app: 55.43333, 26.11667
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)Gedžiūnėlių pilkapynas
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Gedžiūnų pilkapynas
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Salako pilkapynas
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Dvarykščiaus pilkapynas
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Kretuonų pilkapynas
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Gailiutiškės pilkapynas
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Опса
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Lūžų pilkapynas
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
1 source behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q12662575wikidata.org
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Laukstenių 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