Dubingių istorinė žemė - Rytų Lietuvos pilkapių kultūros ar lietuvių pilkapių teritorija?

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Dubingių piliavietė; Baluošos piliakalnis; Jonėnų piliakalnis; Jutonių pilkapynas; Mikroregionas; Dubingiai castle-site; Microregion; Ethnogenesis; East Lithuanian barrow culture; Lithuanian barrows.

ENOn 1 April 2011 a group of scientists from Vilnius University (Prof. Dr. Albinas Kuncevičius (research supervisor), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rimvydas Laužikas, Renaldas Augustinavičius, Ramūnas Šmigelskas and Indrė Rutkauskaitė) started implementing a 4-year research project titled "Beginnings of Lithuanian statehood according to the exploration of Dubingiai microregion". The goal of this article is to analyse the problems and theoretical and methodical research assumptions formed and solved in the initial stage of the project "Beginnings of Lithuanian statehood according to the exploration of Dubingiai microregion". In contemporary literature, the term of microregion is used to denote several meanings: political-economic, geographical, historical-cultural. To define the historical microregion, scientists often apply the formal criterion by associating a microregion with a historical or contemporary administrative-territorial unit. We may assert that the communication paradigm is far more appropriate to define the historical microregion than the formal criterion. According to the model presented in the article, the historical microregion is a cultural and natural space developed through natural historical processes, with its inhabitants maintaining tight links and close communication. In terms of communication, such a long lake as Lake Dubingiai essentially performed the role of a river. It marked a natural border ("barrier") between one territory and the other driving residents to inhabit the banks along the lake and to seek the crossings across the "barrier" for communication. The places where trade routes crossed natural barriers witnessed the establishment of saloons and settlements for the purpose of servicing travellers as well as protecting crossings and bridges, which eventually evolved into the centres of microregions.There were two centres of such type in Dubingiai microregion: Dubingiai mound was to protect the crossing near Dubingiai Town, while Baluoša mound protected the crossing near Alka Village. In the 15th-16th centuries the boundaries of Dubingiai microregion were formalized by means of two – religious (parish) and secular (eldership, powiat, duchy) administrative-territorial units. The theory of ethnogenesis may be considered the theoretical basis of prehistoric (1st-13th c.) research of microregions. This theory best applies to the territories where the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was formed in the 11th-13th centuries. Such an approach allows us to refuse a stereotypical concept of archaeological culture oriented towards a complex of findings and creates conditions for more comprehensive interpretations of artefacts in natural, social, cultural and ethnic contexts. The East Lithuanian Barrow Culture explored by archaeologists from the said perspective, as showing direct links with the area inhabited by Lithuanian tribes, should be called and perceived as the Lithuanian Tribe Barrow Culture. The present term of the East Lithuanian Culture, even though refers to a prehistoric culture, is nevertheless associated with the 20th century geopolitical borders. The barrow culture under discussion covers the area which is located in the southeastern part of Lithuania and the western part of Belarus in contemporary geopolitical situation. The research of barrows and mounds is a fundamental methodical problem. Following the sample-population ratio theory applied in mathematical statistics, to obtain reliable scientific data on barrows and mounds, we have to carry out an archaeological investigation of their vast areas. [...]. [From the publication]