Senosios Lietuvos šventvietės. Joniškio rajonas

LT2015–2016 m. archyvuose ir bibliotekose buvo renkamos, žvalgomosiose ekspedicijose tikslinamos ir pildomos žinios apie baltų religijos šventvietes Joniškio rajone. Plačiam skaitytojų ratui skirtą leidinį pradeda įvadas, jame nagrinėjami su šventviečių paieška, apsauga ir tyrimais susiję klausimai. Toliau aprašomos 225 vietos, skelbiamos jų geografinės padėties koordinatės, matavimai, daugelis archeologinių, istorinių, tautosakinių ir etnologinių žinių, 1780–1949 m. žemėlapių iškarpos, schemos ir nuotraukos. Tai pirmasis toks išsamus Lietuvos šventviečių sąvadas, kuris tęsia autoriaus jau atliktus Žemaitijos (1998) ir Rytų Aukštaitijos (2006) šventviečių tyrinėjimus ir pradeda Žiemgalos šventvietėms skirtų leidinių rinktinę. [Anotacija knygoje]Reikšminiai žodžiai: Šventosios vietos; Joniškio rajono savivaldybės teritorija; Archeologiniai tyrinėjimai; Mitologija; Pasakojimai, lietuvių; Archeologiniai radiniai; Holy places; Territory of the Joniškis district municipality; Archeological research; Mythology; Tales; Archaeological finds.

ENIn 1850, Mauricijus Griškevičius (1801–1864), one of the enlightened Samogitians and the treasurer of the Šiauliai economy, produced the first information on the sacred places of the Joniškis district. The pine wood near the pond of the Rukuižiai watermill and the abundance of grasssnakes observed there appeared to Griškevičius a mark of the ancient religion, like its distant echo. He associated the name of the nobility village of Krikštanai in the neighbourhood of Reibiniai with the period of the introduction of Christianity. Soon some data on the sacred places found its way to the folklore collections compiled by Matas Slančiauskas (1850–1924), a tailor by profession and a distributor of the Lithuanian press, and by his closest friend Juozas Trumpulis (c. 1862–1943). In 1902, a valuable list of fifteen islands of Mūša Tyrelis (Mūša wetland) was drawn and folk tales about Miknaičiai Lake and Akmuo Island were recorded from Marijona Čeputytė in the Trumpaičiai village. The diversity of all the sacred places is reflected in the questionnaires of Lietuvos Žemės vardynas (Onomastics of Place-names of the Land of Lithuania) that were completed from 1935 to 1939 by teachers, foresters and their helpers under the instruction of the Ministry of Education. Numerous exceptional place names, folk tales and clarifications were recorded in over 275 questionnaires of the homesteads, villages, hamlets and forestries of Joniškis, Gruzdžiai, Kriukai, Meškuičiai, Pašvitinys, Skaistgiris and Žagarė rural districts. It was an invaluable source for the investigations into the sacred places of the Joniškis area! This link connects us with the ancient Lithuanian village, with the communities that have always lived in one location, as well as with their culture and world-perception.In 1970, the English teacher of the Žeimelis secondary school, the ethnographer and museologist Juozas Šliavas (1930–1979) produced thorough records of the place names of the Joniškis district and of the whole Žiemgala (Semigallia). This work was later continued by the linguist Nerija Bartkutė. Aleksandras Žalys (b. 1926), a mathematics teacher at Endriškiai, was the first to raise concerns about the fate of the oaks and stones uprooted and split during land improvement by drainage. By then, around 50,000 hectares of land had been drained in the Joniškis district, while the sound of stones being broken into pieces was heard at the school of Endriškiai. At that time, Vaclovas Intas was rescuing the stones of the environs of Mosėdis and his efforts were appreciated by the writer Juozas Baltušis in one of the newspapers. ‘I was encouraged by it’, remembers Žalys. He transported the stones with conical bowls to primary schools, to the people he knew in those places, and brought three stones from the Tarbūčiai village to the yard of his home in Juodeikiai. In 1971, the expedition under the archaeologist Vytautas Urbanavičius (b. 1935) conducted excavations near the stone with a bowl in the yard of Juozas Briedis’ house in Radikiai, although with no significant results. In 1974, local ethnographers of Žeimelis led by Juozas Šliavas carried out excavations near the stone with a bowl of Blauzdžiūnai. In the summer of 1975, Šliavas surveyed numerous other archaeological and mythological monuments of the Joniškis district. This invites the thought that the wellknown ethnographer used the 1973 list of cultural monuments, travelled with a German topographic map of 1915 (1 : 25,000), talked to a great number of old residents of the place, carried out exact measurements and photographed those monuments, and rescued archaeological finds, ethnographic tools and some objects of historical value from ruin.In his works Šiaurės Lietuvos lygumos (Planes of Northern Lithuania, 1974) and Mūšos senovė (The Antiquity of Mūša, 1975), Šliavas not only described actual locations in the Joniškis district and some of the data he had collected, but also shared his thoughts and insights on the religion and sacred places of the Semigallians. Unfortunately, Juozas Šliavas’ extensive manuscript legacy kept at Vilnius University Library is hardly known to the general public. From 2001 to 2005 and in 2007, the sacred places of the Joniškis district were explored by expeditions headed by the archaeologist Ernestas Vasiliauskas (b. 1976). Although without significant results, investigations were carried out in the location of St Bridget spring in the village of Kalnelis, attention was paid to the stone with carved marks in Mūšos Tyrelis, the hills and the beds of streams called Raganynės. An exhaustive list of stones with conical bowls was compiled and a map of their distribution was published. It emerged at that time that besides Žalys, collections of stones with conical bowls in the Joniškis district were owned by Albinas and Nijolė Dantos in Kalnelis (two stones), Virgilijus Sruogis in Jurdaičiai (two stones), and Gendrutis and Ugnė Vaineikis in Joniškis (five stones). (It was found out later that Zigmas Radvilas in Daukšiai had three stones.) [...]. [From the publication]

• Etnologija / Ethnology
• Archeologija / Archaeology