Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)
Skubėtų 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
The Skubėtų pilkapynas is a barrow cemetery in south-eastern Lithuania, in Šalčininkai district, 1 km south of Skubėtai, on both sides of a local track to Šalčininkėliai, in woodland. It is an archaeological monument of state significance.
Two groups of barrows survive, together comprising 42 barrows, some of them damaged. Burials of horses dated to the ninth to twelfth centuries were found in them.
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Article
Skubėtų pilkapynas
The mounds are 6–14 m in diameter and up to 2 m high, and are surrounded by pits and ditches.
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Skubėtų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Skubėtų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
The mounds are 6–14 m in diameter and up to 2 m high, and are surrounded by pits and ditches.
ExcavationsSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Skubėtų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Skubėtų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
The cemetery was investigated in 1979–1980 by archaeologists led by Ona Kuncienė. Horse burials of the ninth to twelfth centuries were found, one or two in each barrow. The grave goods consist of iron stirrups, bits, links and buckles, iron fittings of bridles, bronze bells, iron sickles, awls and potsherds. The finds are kept in the National Museum of Lithuania.
ContextSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Skubėtų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Lithuanian): Skubėtų 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 they are barrow cemeteries rather than 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
- 1979
Skubėtų pilkapyną 1979–1980 m. tyrė Onos Kuncienės vadovaujami archeologai.
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°22′36″ N, 25°20′36″ EFor a GPS or map app: 54.37667, 25.34333
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)Jašiūnų pilkapynas
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Stakų pilkapynas
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Senųjų Macelių pilkapynas
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Didžiulių pilkapynas
Mūrininkų pilkapiai- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Dieveniškių pilkapynas
Grigiškių pilkapynas
Naujosios Vilnios pilkapynas
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
1 source behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q20504314wikidata.org
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Skubėtų 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): Skubėtų pilkapynasCC BY-SA 4.0
- Wikidata Q20504314CC0