Recreating the life of the ancient Balts

  • 2000-07-13
  • By Darius James Ross
KERNAVE, Lithuania - Have you ever tried visualizing the daily life and customs of an ancient people based on a visit to a museum? Not an easy task when all you have to go on is some pottery, jewelry and perhaps a few weapons or coins - basically anything that can withstand organic decay.

Last year, a group of imaginative Lithuanian scholars decided to breathe some life into archeology and put together the first "Living Archeology Festival." It was an instant success and, with a minimum of publicity, drew 7,000 visitors over a three-day run. This year's version took place over the July 6 to 9 long weekend, offered a doubling in the number of live exhibits and saw an unanticipated explosion in the number of visitors. It was held during the state holiday commemorating the coronation of Mindaugas, Lithuania's first king.

The festival was held at the historic site of ancient Kernave (about 40 minutes from Vilnius), often referred to as Lithuania's first capital. Long before Vilnius rose to prominence as the Lithuanian state capital, Kernave was the most important center of trade and industry for the pre-historic Lithuanian Baltic tribes. The site itself is well worth a visit: while nothing remains of the hill fort and town, the countryside is picturesque and there is an ancient aura about the place.

The Sirvintos area mayor, Vytas Simonelis, addressed the crowd during the official opening.

"Throughout history Lithuania has been attacked, has defended itself and was rebuilt only to suffer the same cycle over again. Today we have our permanent symbols of nationhood: our anthem, flag and Kernave," he said.

Saulius Vadisis, director of the Kernave Museum, invited the audience to participate in a trip through Lithuanian history.

"We are happy to have so many Vilniusites here today, but for this weekend only we are temporarily moving the capital back to Kernave," he said.

The aim of the festival is to bring archeology to the average person. The festival grounds were sectioned off into two areas: Stone Age and Bronze Age pavilions depicting the life of the tribes prior to the Lithuanian state and pavilions recreating life in the Middle Ages. Museum workers, serious history buffs and graduate students staffed the pavilions. All wore period dress: sheep or animal skins and leather moccasins for the earlier periods, homespun linen outfits and straw hats for the later.

Daiva Luchtainiene and her husband Aleksas ran the Bronze Age cooking tent. They demonstrated how the Balts cooked meat and grain patties on flat stones heated in a fire pit. Fish was cooked in clay over the coals and unshelled crawfish were grilled directly on them.

"This is a festival demonstrating practical, or what's often called experimental, archeology. Here the archeology museum comes alive. All the implements we are using have been made according to what we know of technology during that time. The Bronze Age Balts were children of nature," she said.

Valentinas Vaskevicius, owner of the Snekutis microbrewery, demonstrated the making of traditional Lithuanian ale. By all accounts he was making a tidy profit from sales of his brew to boot.

"We brew ale according to traditions that have been handed down to us through oral folklore. Our biggest challenge is not using refined sugar in the process, as Lithuanian peasants had no access to this. Our only concession is that we use stainless steel vats, which is unfortunate as oak casks add their own subtle flavors to the ale. Brewing in the old days followed the harvest cycle. Every landholder was a brewer and there would have been thousands of recipes for ale as every person used slightly different ingredients. It was a point of pride to invite one's neighbors over to help in the final process and then share the resulting ale. Anyone who didn't was considered a skinflint," he said.

Gintautas Velius, a doctoral student and son of Lithuania's most famous folklore scholar, Norbertas Velius, ran the archery display. "We've made bows according to stone age technology. We've used dried hardwood and beef tendon for the bows and sharpened flint and turkey feathers for the arrows. We discovered some real ones in a clearing not far from here which is how we were able to recreate them," he said.

The pavilion was inundated with young boys who were allowed to try one shot at a target for a price of one litas ($0.25). Meddlesome parents embarrassed their befuddled children with instruction on technique while distracting them with their cameras: anything to capture that one perfect, heroic childhood snapshot.

Other pavilions showed the crafts of spinning and weaving, pottery, flint production, bronze and amber jewelry production, house building, woodworking, birch bark bucket manufacture and leather working. The atmosphere was enlivened by all-day musical performances of ancient Lithuanian songs with pastoral themes and musicians playing zithers and wooden flutes.

Andrius Paskus, a recent Vilnius University archeology M.A. graduate, was the festival's English language interpreter. "For tourists and Lithuanians themselves, this festival shows how ancient people lived, worked and dressed. It shows how the things we see in museums were actually made, as museums don't really show this. There is a great need for this kind of event, as people often don't understand what they are looking at in a museum. This is an introduction to archeology for the general public, it is live archeology," he said.

Perhaps the best testament to the continuity between the life of the ancient Balts and modern Lithuanians, aside from enduring pagan superstitions and stylized folk song festivals, was when a large toad was seen hopping around, prey to being trampled by the large crowd. A smartly dressed middle-aged woman didn't hesitate for an instant to pick it up with one hand and carry it to the edge of the forest saying: "poor toad, we don't want anything to happen to you."

What are the chances of seeing that in good old sanitized North America?