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Emergence of Hilltop Settlements in the Southeastern Baltic: New AMS 14C Dates from Lithuania and Revised Chronology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2019

Vytenis Podėnas Open the ORCID record for Vytenis Podėnas [Opens in a new window]
Vytenis Podėnas*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, Lithuanian Institute of History, Kražių 5, LT-01108Vilnius, Lithuania
*
*Corresponding author. Email: vytenispodenas@gmail.com
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Abstract

The emergence of hilltop settlements presents a pattern of the first enclosed sites that reflect economic development in several regions within the Southeastern Baltic Bronze Age. This novelty reflects increasing social complexity, differentiating economic relations, as well as rising tension in the region. The phenomenon has received a great deal of interpretation, but chronological problems still remain understudied. Researchers tend to seek the start of hilltop settling practice from early to late II millennium BC. This paper presents 14C dates from 7 sites in inland Lithuania, where hitherto no absolute dates were published. The majority of absolute dates has been calibrated to the Hallstatt radiocarbon calibration plateau (ca. 800–400 cal BC) which is significantly later than previously presumed based on dates from Belarusian sites. However, several dates from previously dated hilltop settlements in the region predate the effect. These results indicate the start of hilltop settling practice around 11th–9th centuries cal BC. Review of new and previously published radiocarbon dates suggests a different internal development between SE Baltic coastal and inland regions, likely locating zones, where economic outside stimulus preconditioning emergence of hilltop settlements occurred earlier.

Keywords

AMS 14C datesBronze Agehilltop settlementsSoutheastern Baltic
Type
Research Article
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , April 2020 , pp. 361 - 377
Copyright
© 2019 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona

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