The previously unknown burial site was discovered in 2021, after an anonymous person brought a box of archaeological artefacts to the Department of Archaeology of Vilnius University (1). ). The artefacts included jewellery, items of clothing and weapons. Some of the items were burnt, which indicated that they were from burnt graves. Among them, artefacts characteristic of male graves, such as fire crackers (2) and spurs (3), dominated. The box also contained a map with the coordinates of the site. Archaeologists went to the site, a forest 4 km from Kernavė by Lake Spėra, and found cremated human bones and shards of rusted pots just on the surface of the ground. In 2023, more extensive archaeological investigations started on a small hill in the area of the newly discovered burial site, and an area of 45 m2 was investigated (4).
5 kg of cremated human bones were collected in the upper layer to a depth of half a metre, and more than 200 metal archaeological finds and fragments were found. Nearly 500 shards of pottery were also found. It turned out that burnt human bones were not buried at the site, but were poured on the surface of the ground along with their coffins. More burial sites of this kind, usually dating back to the medieval period, are known in Eastern Lithuania: Bajorai burial ground in Elektrėnai municipality and Bedugne burial ground in Trakai district.
Judging by the graves found during the research, this part of the burial site was dominated by female burials. The finds included female-specific grave goods, such as shamrocks (5), brooches (6, 7), clasps (8), rings (9), bracelets (10), spindles (11) and various brass elements of clothing (12). Among the finds, the following items were also rarely found in burial sites of the time: an amber amulet (13), the plating of an amulet made of a bear's claw (14), scales weights (15) and scales plates, fragments of bone shards. No weapons were found in the excavated part of the burial site, only one sword scabbard plating was found (16). The belt plating found was also attributed to male clothing attributes (17). The cremated bones were radiocarbon dated to the late 11th-12th century.
There were more surprises in store for archaeologists. Among the cremated medieval human bones, 28 sherds of striated pottery dating from the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century AD were found (18). As no traces of occupation from this period were observed in the surveyed area, it can be assumed that it was the site of a destroyed cairn of the dash pottery culture. The early pot sherds discovered are probably the remains of urns broken in later times. The remains of a burial mound about 10 m in diameter were also exposed beneath the layer of ashlar graves - a small part of the preserved summit, the ditch surrounding the mound, and the grave of the horse in the centre (19). The skeleton of the horse has been radiocarbon dated to the end of the 7th-8th century. The tradition of burying dead members of the community, including horses, in burial mounds in Eastern Lithuania existed for almost 1000 years, from the 3rd to the 12th century.
The burial site began to be formed in the territory of the cemetery at the turn of the century, and the site retained its sacred character as a necropolis of the dead until the first centuries of Lithuanian statehood. In the future, archaeologists will try to find out the size of the burial site from different periods and the number of burial mounds that existed in the site. The question that remains unanswered is: where did the members of the communities that left these graves and burial mounds lived? Thus, archaeologists will find undiscovered prehistoric settlements at Lake Spėra, or perhaps even an unknown hillfort hidden somewhere in the forest depths.
Information prepared by Dr Gintautas Vėlius Visual information by Algis Kuzmickas
The gallery presents the finds from this burial site, which are preserved in the Kernavė Archaeological Site Museum. Click on the picture to see it!
Gallery
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