| Abstract [eng] |
East Lithuanian barrows spread out in the Eastern Lithuanian area and northwestern part of Belarus. Horse burials are quite often found during archaeological excavations of East Lithuanian barrows. But there is no thorough summary data on the research material. This article deals only with the horse burials of East Lithuanian barrows of the late iron age. The purpose of the article is to summarize the funeral customs of horse graves, to define the chronology of horse burials, to mark grave types according to funeral customs, to define the origin of the custom to bury horses, to mark the regions according to horse burial customs, to restore the ritual of burying a horse according to archaeological data. Information about horse graves in East Lithuanian barrows comes from the middle of the 19th century. In the second half of the 19th century barrows were excavated by A. Pliateris, A.H. Kirkoras, but most of all horse burials in the end of the 19th century were examined by F. Pokrovskis. In the interwar time, a lot of horse graves were explored by Polish archaeologists R. Jakimowicz, E. and W. Hołubowicz. From the 19th century till the middle of the 20th century the material was only accumulated and published. There is no summary on horse graves... |
