Archaeology and material cultural heritage enjoys a particular status as a form of heritage that, capturing the public imagination, has become the locus for the expression and negotiation of regional, national, and intra-national cultural identities. One important question is: why and how do contemporary people engage with archaeological heritage objects, artefacts, information or knowledge outside the realm of an professional, academically-based archaeology? This question is investigated here from the perspective of theoretical considerations based on Yuri Lotman’s semiosphere theory, which helps to describe the connections between the centre and peripheries of professional archaeology as sign structures. The centre may be defined according to prevalent scientific paradigms, while periphery in the space of creolisation in which, through interactions with other culturally more distant sign structures, archaeology-related nonprofessional communities emerge. On the basis of these considerations, we use collocation analysis on representative English language corpora to outline the structure of the field of archaeology-related nonprofessional communities, identify salient creolised peripheral spaces and archaeology-related practices, and develop a framework for further investigation of archaeological knowledge production and reuse in the context of global archaeology.

The eastern Baltic region represents the world’s most northerly limit of successful broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) (hereafter, millet) cultivation in the past, yet this crop has been almost forgotten today. The earliest millet in the eastern Baltic region has been identified from macrobotanical remains which were directly dated to ca 1000 BCE. Between 800 and 500 BCE, millet was one of the major staple foods in the territory of modern-day Lithuania. Millet continued to play an important role in past agriculture up until the 15th century, with its use significantly declining during the following centuries. This paper analyses both the archaeobotanical records and written sources on broomcorn millet cultivation in Lithuania from its first arrival all the way through to the 19th century. The manuscript reviews the evidence of millet cultivation in the past as documented by archaeobotanical remains and historical accounts. In light of fluctuating records of millet cultivation through time, we present the hypothetical reasons for the decline in millet use as human food. The paper hypothesizes that the significant decrease in broomcorn millet cultivation in Lithuania from the 15th century onwards was likely influenced by several factors, which include climate change (the Little Ice Age) and the agricultural reforms of the 16th century. However, more detailed research is required to link past fluctuations in millet cultivation with climatic and historical sources, thus better understanding the roots of collapsing crop biodiversity in the past.

This study explores how major climatic shifts, together with socioeconomic factors over the past two millennia, influenced buffer crop selection, focusing on five crops: rye, millet, buckwheat, oat, and hemp. For this study, we analyzed archaeobotanical data from 135 archaeological contexts and historical data from 242 manor inventories across the northeastern Baltic region, spanning the period from 100 to 1800 AD. Our findings revealed that rye remained a main staple crop throughout the studied periods reflecting environmental adaptation to northern latitudes. The drought-tolerant and thermophilic millet crop exhibited resilience during the adverse dry climatic conditions of the Medieval Climatic Anomaly while showing a significant decline during the Little Ice Age. During the period of post-1500 AD, a significant shift towards cold-resilient summer crops such as buckwheat and hemp is recorded. This study enhances our understanding of how historical agricultural systems responded to both socioeconomic factors and climatic change in northern latitudes, offering notable potential solutions for modern agricultural practices in the face of future climate variability trends.

Preservation of immovable cultural heritage is one of the main challenges for contemporary society. Nowadays very often organizations responsible for heritage management constantly have to deal with lack of resources, which are crucial for proper heritage preservation, maintaining and protection.The possible solution of these problems could be automated heritage monitoring, based on the 3D and AI technologies. 3D scanning technology is the most accurate method to capture the situation of an evolving cultural heritage object or complex at a given time. As a cultural heritage object or complex is evolving continuously, AI based comparison of two 3D point clouds created at different time allow to reliably trace potential changes. Proposed solution is realized by project financed by Research Council of Lithuania „Automated monitoring of urban heritage implementing 3D technologies”. The first results of the project are presented at this article.

The article focuses on the strategic management of digitization in Lithuania. It elaborates on the development process of a conceptual approach to the creation of seamless content of the digital cultural heritage and presents the changing social context and a new paradigm of the legislation on the cultural heritage as well as its financing issues.The period of 2005–2009 should be considered a turning point in the cultural policy of Lithuania as the approval of the Concept for the Digitization of the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage and the Strategy for the Digitization of the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage, Digital Content Preservation and Access and its Implementation Framework in 2009–2013 by the Lithuanian government, which resulted in a new paradigm for the consolidation of memory institutions, oriented to cross-sectoral collaboration in digitizing Lithuania’s cultural heritage. These documents also provided more possibilities to receive financial support from the State budget and the EU Structural Funds for the digitization of the national cultural heritage and its long-term preservation and access. The major unsolved problems of the previous period have evolved from the inappropriate interpretation of strategic documents within the institutional environment. When interpreting these documents, conservative non-compatible institutional models were applied for strategic managing. Therefore, digitization was carried out without fully evaluating the social context and consolidating resources, thus resulting in poor quality digitization products, which were unrelated and satisfied the needs of institutions rather than of the users.The environment of the strategic management in the new programming period of 2014–2020 is shaped by the development of the network society, as it is defined by social sciences, the experience of the previous strategic period, and the highest level strategic documents defining the new period. The article also introduces the experience of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania and Vilnius University’s Faculty of Communication, activities by these and other twenty main cultural institutions of Lithuania in the development of the cultural and information society policy and the strategic management of cultural heritage digitization, and initiatives within these activities for the 2014–2020 programming period.