INTRODUCTION in the World of Antiquity and in the Middle

INTRODUCTION

This book is dedicated to my family.

The Secret of the Universe Night. It is quiet. An amazing mirage suddenly opens up before my very eyes. The stars glimmer. Large and small. Weighing down the universe’s secret. Where is the end? The beginning? The edge? A deep longing catches my heart. A small point in eternity glimmers. The small earth. Large mankind. Kazys Boruta (Lietuvių poezija, vol. II. Vilnius, 1969, p. 79) In the world of Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, Baltic amber—succinite or “northern gold”—was an attractive and universally accepted commodity, which, together with a variety of other goods, was continuously in motion over internal, regional and inter-regional European land and maritime routes. However, within the historiographic European tradition amber became not only a symbolic unit of trade linking northern and southern regions, but named those same trade routes, known as “Amber Routes”, “Amber Roads” or “Amber Trails”. However, a large number of the so-called “Amber Routes” became suggestive metaphors, which sometimes cast an attractive romantic glow over a complicated network of communications and the development of political and economic relations all over Europe. By the same token, in this context “Amber Route”, from an alluring met- aphor, becomes a reality that takes both the amber and its researcher far beyond its origins in the region’s north. As the territory in which amber was used as a raw material or a product expanded, and as amber became an integral part of different communities’ existence, the problems of research are naturally increased. One of those problems is the distribution of amber, which constitutes the movement of “northern gold” southwards, often with the amber returning back, only crafted. Be that as it may, amber, via trade routes and by other forms of distribution system, spread in the largest, culturally-diverse Euro- pean regions as an exclusive luxury commodity without any practical pur- pose. Amber became regarded as a sign of social status or was used as an 2 introduction amulet. People from earlier times held amber’s healing and antiseptic prop- erties in high regard. From early prehistory, amber was used in sacrificial rituals. Thus the aesthetically pleasing “northern gold”, in certain periods of history, was equal in value to goods that held high strategic worth. Already this was true in the Roman Empire, where, as mentioned by Pliny the Elder, even a small amber sculpture sometimes carried a higher price than a “vigor- ous slave”. However, the idea behind this book was the systematic analysis and synthesis of the huge, and in most cases, completely new archaeological evidence on amber from Lithuania and the surrounding regions. The comprehensive synthesis of archaeological evidence provided the opportunity to develop new viewpoints on the amber sources; extraction methods; amber-wearing traditions in different ethnocultural groups and by people of different social status, age and gender; and the amber trade in different markets in Lithu- ania and the whole eastern Baltic region. Herewith analyzing the quantity of amber in separate ethnocultural groups; examining amber usage traditions according to gender; comparing amber usage traditions with a person’s social status etc., the huge amount of archaeological data throws down a challenge—how to properly use the collected data. Some statistical analyses were used to solve these problems. The important milestone of this study is the interdisciplinary dimension. This attitude towards the study of amber in the north provided the notion that it is not simply an investigation of the “northern gold” itself but, first and foremost, a study of the social and economic existence of ethnically different peoples who lived around the Baltic Sea. These studies allow one to create a considerably wider picture of the evolution of various cultures, including their rise and fall. For Lithuania and the eastern Baltic region, amber created a strangely unique opportunity, through its everyday use (as jewellery and amulets) and through its significance carried into eternity, which enabled a description of Antiquity and the Middle Ages in Lithuania from circa 100 to 1200. Just as the mysterious topic of amber sacrificially “drowned” in water provided the opportunity to tell a story that opened up the worldview of this northern European region. However, a tradition of amber usage in the territory of Lithuania and the eastern Baltic region was not only dependent on the ability of local communities to acquire amber and to use it, but, to a larger degree, the use of “northern gold” in the north was determined by cultural developments that took place in Europe. Amber allows researchers the vital opportunity to characterize the constantly-changing Aestii/Balt cultures and to look at the eastern Baltic region and what is modern-day Lithuania from “outside”, exposing the entire vast area in a wide European perspective.