A Fisherman’s Grave in the Medieval Burial Site of Paūdronys

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

The article contains information about grave No. 27, which dates back to the second half of the fourteenth–the fifteenth century, located in the ward of Turgeliai of Šalčininkai district, near the state border between Lithuania and Belarus. In this grave, a person (a man aged 30–40) is buried with burial items characteristic of that period and one completely uncharacteristic and unique burial item, a large copper- alloy fishing hook. The burial of the dead in the Paūdronys burial site was carried out according to essentially Christian customs, predominantly with the head of the deceased at the western end of the grave. Unlike in a whole series of contemporaneous sites where the old pre-Christian burial customs are even more evident, no weapons, clay pots with food, bird bones, or other burial items characteristic of the period in question were found here. Paūdronys is located close (about 12 km) to the historic settlement of Medininkai with an important castle, where one of the first parishes in Lithuania was established and a church was built as early as 1391. Therefore it is likely that the activities of Catholic priests and the Christianisation processes were quite rapid in these environs in the fourteenth–the early fifteenth century. Grave No. 27 is badly damaged, with only part of the skeleton of the deceased preserved. The deceased was buried lying on his back, with outstretched legs, head to the west at 250 degrees. No traces of the coffin were observed. The person buried in the grave is a man aged 30–40. An iron knife with a tang, its edge pointing toward the feet and the point towards the right shoulder, was found above the left pelvic bone. Two iron buckles were found side by side near the left pelvic bone, at the proximal end of the femur. An iron D-shaped buckle with a tongue was found on the outside of the pelvis. A second iron buckle, with a brass tongue, was found just 0.5 cm away from the first buckle, a little further inside the pelvis. The second buckle is badly corroded and crumbled. An iron rosette-shaped piece of plating was found on the femur within 10 cm of the buckles (and the proximal end of the left femur). The plating was probably attached to a leather purse, but no other traces of it were found. An iron chain link was found on the inner side of the right femur, near the proximal end. A well-preserved brass fishing hook, with a barb and an eye for a line, was found within 5 cm of both buckles towards the outside of the tomb. The hook is massive, for catching predatory fish. Its length is 42 mm. The hook is made of a copper alloy containing 82.1% copper, 14.4% tin, with minor impurities of zinc, iron, lead arsenic, and nickel. The shank and the point have a rectangular cross-section; the eyelet is flattened, with an eye for the line in it. With the exception of the fishing hook, the set of burial items is quite typical of Lithuanian burial sites of the late fourteenth–the fifteenth century. The fishing hook enables interpretations of this burial. Keywords: fishing hook, fishing, Middle Ages, burial, Paūdronys burial site, south-eastern Lithuania