Peripheral or non-peripheral? The "world view" of the Bronze Age people in the eastern Baltic

• Leidėjo tinklalapis: knygos tekstas

ENThe eastern coast region as geographical part of the Baltic Sea can also be seen as an important arena of transcultural relationships in the Bronze Age. The role of the contacts between the societies living here and in the Nordic world has been researched by several scholars since the early 1940s (see the overview by Sperling 2016, 3‑10). Most of them argue for Nordic influence on local communities (Jaanusson 1985; Lõugas 1985; Lang and Kriiska 2007; Nerman 1933; 1954) while the opposite opinion is rather an exception (Šturms 1947). In both cases the argumentation relies on bronze artefacts and their typology or on evidence of possible migration of people from the north to the east (the so called “devil’s boat” graves in the eastern Baltic). Only little is known about the pottery and its potential for studying interrelationships across the Baltic Sea (Eriksson 2009; Jaanusson 1981). This style of approach tends to simplify the cultural situation on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea and the role of the activities of people in the Bronze Age remains invisible. This situation makes the eastern Baltic region intriguing, because there is a need for rethinking of how archaeology deals with the cultures without elements of conspicuous display (see also Sperling 2016, 10‑14). There is no reason to doubt that the eastern shore of the Baltic was an integral part of the Nordic network of communication and exchange. This started already in the Neolithic, even before the advent of the Corded Ware culture, and continued into the Early Bronze Age (Lang 2007; Lang and Kriiska 2007). This exchange was of different intensity: while in the Early Bronze Age only some imported items from Scandinavia can be related to the sphere of Nordic contacts (Lang and Kriiska 2007), the Late Bronze Age has yielded an impressive amount of material, illustrating the extensive character of relationships.Keeping in mind that the eastern Baltic was interconnected with the North, the main question remains in how far the term “peripheral” is appropriate to those regions and whether it is still relevant to eastern Baltic archaeology. Furthermore, in order to find the answer, we have to try to elucidate the lifestyle of societies in the region and their role in circum-Baltic connections in the Bronze Age. In line with recently published contributions on this topic (Sperling 2016; Podėnas and Čivilytė 2019), it should be pointed out that the people living here had a lifestyle which was different from those elsewhere, and that this fully met their requirements. This topic could be tackled from various angles, but in this article I will focus on aspects such as metal imports and copies, metallurgy and technology, economy, social structures and ritual practices in the eastern Baltic Sea region. Overall, this article argues that these societies were open to innovations from far away and shared their ideas with others, but also possessed their own style of life. In this article I am going to discuss the question of periphery in archaeological research and how it can be assessed for the eastern Baltic region. As an alternative, a model of an independent, specific style of life of local societies is presented, which does not necessarily have to be connected to the world system. [Extract, p. 309-310]