dr Mikalai Plavinski

Uniwersytet Warszawski

Wydział Archeologii

VIII KONGRES MEDIEWISTÓW POLSKICH - GNIEZNO 2025

Coordinator

28. From Jatviag to Mindaugas. The Lands of the Balts in the Early Middle Ages

List of papers

28. From Jatviag to Mindaugas. The Lands of the Balts in the Early Middle Ages

‘Forgotten Eastern Borderlands’ (Early Medieval Cemeteries of the East Lithuanian Barrow Culture in North-Western Belarus)

The area of distribution of archaeological sites of the East Lithuanian Barrow Culture covers the territory of eastern Lithuania and the adjacent north-western regions of Belarus. However, over a long period, starting from the second half of the 20th century, there has been an obvious unbalance in the degree of study of the antiquities of this culture in the territory of Lithuania and Belarus. Belarusian part of the area is significantly less studied. This concerns both field research and the publication of archival materials and museum collections. For this reason, the eastern and south-eastern part of the area of the culture is perceived by many researchers as an understudied and poorly outlined periphery. The main task of the paper is to systematise the available information on the topography and chronology of the East Lithuanian Barrows in the territory of north-western Belarus and to determine the eastern and south-eastern borders of the culture as precisely as possible.

3. Weapons - tool and symbol of power

Finds of Weapons Elements with Emblems of Rurikids from the Territory of Polack Principality: Possibilities of Interpretation

So-called ‘emblems of Rurikids’ represent extremely unusual phenomenon of early medieval East European emblematics. It is considered, that each of representatives of branched Rurikids dynasty had the own, different from others, emblem in the form of a bident or trident which could be represented on coins or seals, or was put on various objects, being a symbol of princely authority or property. Separate, relatively few, but extremely interesting, category of objects with emblems of Rurikids make finds of elements of weaponry. The paper is devoted to consideration of finds of weapons with emblems of Rurikids from the territory of Polack principality, and also, connected with representatives of Polack princely house. The basic attention will be given to the analysis of methodology and basic possibilities of attribution of certain emblems of Rurikids to certain representatives of princely dynasty.