Schulterriemen vom Typ balteus Vidgiriai im Verbreitungsgebiet der Samländisch-Natangischen Kultur
ENThe shoulder straps of the type balteus Vidgiriai from the first phase of the Migration Period constitute the subject of the present study. In the archaeological literature the shoulder straps in question are often mentioned together with the so-called knifes-daggers, which represent another type of artefacts, characteristic for the time and territory under discussion. Numerous shoulder straps found in the territory of modern Lithuania have been studied and documented in great detail for more than twenty years. On the contrary, only a minor number of shoulder strap finds were known from the neighbouring Kaliningrad Oblast (in the late 1st to 6th centuries the settlement area of the Sambian-Natangian culture and in modern history, up to 1945, the heart land of the German Province of East Prussia) until recently. The popular hypotheses on baltei Vidgiriai in the Russian literature of the last years are therefore lacking a statistically significant find basis. The goal of the actual research project was to fill this gap. The author reviewed original finds, archival records as well as pu blications of the post- and the pre-war period, which resulted in the (re)discovery of numerous shoulder strap fragments which had been misidentified, or not identified at all. The archive as well as the collection of the Königsberg Prussia Museum revealed to be the most significant data sources in this context. The accumulated data regarding the baltei Vidgiriai and other relevant grave goods were added to a developed shoulder strap data base and subsequently comparatively analysed.The main focus of the analysis was not only on typological, constructive and technological aspects, but also on the chronological and the social-historical context of the shoulder strap research. The results of the present investigation constitute a so far missing basis for an objective discussion as well as further archaeological research in the south-eastern part of the Baltic Sea region. [From the publication]
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