Publisher: Klaipėdos universitetas, Journal: Archaeologia Baltica, Title: Towards a better understanding of the economy and culture of the Late Bronze Age in the southeastern Baltic - Tarbiškės settlements, Authors: Gytis Piličiauskas, Rokas Vengalis, Karolis Minkevičius , In 2020, rescue excavations due to construction of a pipeline connecting Poland and Lithuania took place at the Bronze Age sites Tarbiškės 1 and Tarbiškės 2, eastern Lithuania, both dated to 1050–900 cal BC. They revealed a rather homogeneous archaeological assemblage which fills a gap in the development of the Bronze Age culture and economy in the southeastern Baltic. Tarbiškės Ware, from a typological as well as chronological point of view, stands in an intermediate position linking Trzciniec culture pottery with Žalioji and Early Striated Wares. Macrobotanical analysis of charred plant remains revealed that Bronze Age people at Tarbiškės cultivated Panicum miliaceum, Hordeum vulgare and Triticum sp. The Tarbiškės sites demonstrate that early farmers used to settle areas at higher elevations with sandy soils, further from large bodies of water. They used flint and other stone tools widely and lacked bronze. Tarbiškės is the first and only ancient settlement discovered in Lithuania with a workshop for on-site manufacturing of polished stone axes with drilled holes.

Sosnowsky’s hogweed (Heracleum sosnowskyi Manden.) mericarps were collected from satellite and stem branch umbels for comparative anatomical investigation. Located near Vilnius city, the habitat of Heracleum sosnowskyi, formerly a natural forest edge has recently been densely occupied by plants of this species. SEM micrographs of abaxial and adaxial surfaces of mericarps obtained from satellite and stem branch umbels of H. sosnowskyi were similar, but morphometrical analysis revealed statistically significant differences in mericarps collected from satellite umbels, which were longer and wider than mericarps from stem branch umbels. The data on longitudinal sections of H. sosnowskyi mericarps clearly showed that embryos of satellite umbels were at later torpedo stage compared to embryos of stem branch umbels, which were at earlier heart stage. These data represent unequal development of the embryos in mericarps from different types of umbels. Such different development can be treated as an adaptation of the invasive plant to occupy the current habitat and survive in the seed bank by allowing the embryo to complete development within a seed and germinate when new conditions permit.

We present new geochronological evidence of latest Palaeoproterozoic–earliest Mesoproterozoic magmatism in the Telsiai Deformation Zone, NW Lithuania. Employing the laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) at the University of Tasmania, Australia, we demonstrate that a granodiorite, which had previously been considered to belong to the 1850–1820 Ma Kursiai charnockitic batholith, has a U–Pb zircon age of ca 1.62 Ga. The weighted mean Pb²⁰⁷/Pb²⁰⁶ age obtained from eight concordant zircon grains is 1625 ± 6 Ma (MSWD = 0.6), while the upper-intercept concordia age is 1619 ± 27 Ma (MSWD = 0.56). Like similar ages of granitoids from several small intrusions in Estonia, this once more indicates extensive melting of the crust at that time. We suggest that both the 1.62 Ga magmatism and the emplacement and crystallization of the large Riga anorthosite–mangerite–charnockite–rapakivi batholith in Latvia and western Estonia at 1580 Ma were far-field feedback effects of the formation of the new Palaeoproterozoic continental crust during the Gothian orogeny at the present SW margin of the East European Craton.

A geochemical and mineralogical approach was used to analyze 3rd millennium BCE pottery from Southeast Lithuania that is attributed to the foreign Corded Ware Culture and local hunter-gatherers. SEM-EDS, XRF, XRD, and FTIR were used to study the peculiarities of the pottery and to develop hypotheses about the raw material and technology choices present. The amounts of ten major elements in the bulk and clay matrix compositions (XRF, SEM-EDS) and eleven trace analytes in the bulk compositions (XRF) were compared with the Clarke values and tested to highlight the significance (Mann–Whitney U and Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Tests) of the differences in the elemental quantities between the clay matrix and bulk compositions, and between the lighter and darker clay matrixes. These also revealed the advantage of Ward’s clustering method using the City-block distance of bulk compositions as a tool for inter-correlating ceramics in attributing them to specific communities and locations. The XRD, FTIR, and SEM-EDS mineralogical analyses indicated a predominance of iron-rich illite clay, quartz, and alkali feldspar, in addition to very low to medium firing temperatures. All of the pottery samples consisted of hydromicaceous clay from local Quaternary glacial sediments that contain weathered granitoid fragments.