Violence in the Stone Age from an Eastern Baltic perspective

• straipsnio tekstas

ENThe Stone Age in the eastern Baltic, embracing both the Mesolithic (ca. 10 000–6500/6300 BP) and Neolithic (ca. 6500/6300–3500 BP), differs from traditional models. The Mesolithic saw a gradual increase in population size, more settled communities, development of amore complex social structure and ideology, and emergence of localcultures, based on hunting, gathering, and freshwater fishing oninland settlements. In the Neolithic, in this heavily forested area rich with fishing resources, notwithstanding some ‘external’ elements of Neolithization, foraging economies persisted. Increasing evidence indicates a very gradual transition to farming by indigenous hunter–fisher–gatherers via contacts ca. 6500–4000 BP. Only in the period of ca. 4000–2500 BP, considered already as the Bronze Age, did the final transition to agriculture take place. To determine possible traces of violence, all available skeletons from Lithuania (26) and the Latvian site of Zvejnieki (223) were examined. In general, the overwhelming majority of traumas can be consideredas ‘casual’, resulting from everyday activities. Cases of circumscribed inflammatory lesions on skull vaults of five males and one trephination could be a reflection of rituals related to a complex social hierarchy in ‘delayed return’ communities. Only complex sites of settlements and several burials of young males from the Late Bronze Age contain evidence of violent deaths.