Christian migrants helped shape Vilnius while Lithuania remained Europe’s last officially pagan state, new research suggests. Isotope analysis has identified a young person who travelled hundreds of kilometres to the city, probably from Orthodox lands farther south, offering new evidence of the cultural and religious diversity of medieval Vilnius.
The study, published in the journal Antiquity, examined human remains from a large medieval cemetery discovered on Bokšto Street in Vilnius Old Town. The burial ground belonged to a Christian community that lived in the city during the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, before Lithuania officially adopted Catholic Christianity in 1387.
The location of the Boksto (Civitas Ruthenica) cemetery inside the old town of Vilnius (dashed blue box). 1) the Kriveikiskiai/Kernave site; 2) Vilnius city – fgure by Rūta Karaliūtė, courtesy Antiquity Publications Ltd
Archaeologists uncovered 532 intact graves, as well as numerous disturbed burials, during eight years of excavations. Radiocarbon dating and analysis of the artefacts indicate that the cemetery remained in use for approximately 150 years.
The community practised Christian burial traditions, placing the dead on their backs in graves aligned from east to west. Only around 10 per cent of the graves contained grave goods, another indication that this was a Christian cemetery. Cross necklaces and metal enkolpions, devotional objects associated with Orthodox Christianity, further reveal the religious identity of at least some of those buried there.
The cemetery stood within the Civitas Ruthenica, or “Ruthenian city,” a district of medieval Vilnius inhabited by an Orthodox Christian population. Although the district was first mentioned in a written source in 1383, the burials show that its Christian community had already been established decades earlier.
“Archaeologists have long suspected that the Civitas Ruthenica community included migrants from the Ruthenian lands. The isotope data now provide direct evidence that at least some individuals buried at Bokšto came from far beyond Lithuania,” explains Dr Rytis Jonaitis of the Lithuanian Institute of History, co-leader of the long-term archaeological investigations at the Bokšto Street cemetery.
Tracing a medieval migrant
Left) necklace made of glass beads and cowrie shells from grave 114; middle) head ornaments from grave 15; top right) the amber cross from grave 404 (photograph: Algis Blažys); lower right) metal enkolpion, found during excavation in Boksto cemetery horizon – Photograph: Rytis Jonaitis, courtesy Antiquity Publications Ltd
The researchers conducted several forms of isotope analysis on the remains of 15 people from the cemetery. They examined tooth enamel and dentine, which preserve information about childhood diet and geographic origins, as well as bone collagen, which reflects a person’s diet during the years before death.
One individual, buried in grave 311, stood out in every set of results. This person died at approximately 18 years of age but had spent their early childhood far from Vilnius.
The chemical evidence preserved in the teeth indicates that the individual’s childhood diet included millet, along with comparatively high levels of food such as meat, dairy products or fish. Millet was becoming less common in Lithuania during this period as colder conditions associated with the beginning of the Little Ice Age favoured crops such as rye and buckwheat.
Evidence from elsewhere in medieval Vilnius supports this dietary transition. A burnt granary previously excavated within the Civitas Ruthenica contained thousands of remains of rye and some buckwheat, but no millet. Farther south, however, millet remained an important crop in territories formerly belonging to the Kievan Rus’.
Strontium and oxygen isotope results also showed that the young person had not grown up around Vilnius. Although the evidence cannot reveal an exact birthplace, the combined results are most consistent with areas in present-day Ukraine or southern Poland, possibly the medieval region of Halych-Volhynia.
By the final years of the individual’s life, their diet had changed. Isotopes preserved in the bones resemble those of the other people buried at Bokšto Street, indicating that the individual adopted local eating habits after arriving in Lithuania. The researchers therefore believe the person probably moved north during adolescence.
The grave contained no objects and otherwise followed Christian funerary customs. According to the researchers, this might reflect an Orthodox Christian upbringing.
Migration and local conversion
The head ornaments (chaplets) from grave 21 (top) and grave 93 (bottom) from the Boksto cemetery, Vilnius. The fashion for wearing such chaplets may have reached Vilnius from Kievan Rus’ – Photographs by R. Jonaitis & I. Kaplūnaitė, courtesy Antiquity Publications Ltd
Other burials offer less conclusive indications of mobility. A man buried in grave 214 may also have come from a southern region, while two men from graves 139 and 226 had isotope values more closely resembling those found around Kernavė, Lithuania’s first medieval capital, located approximately 34 kilometres north-west of Vilnius.
The person in grave 226 was buried in an unusual manner, with crossed legs and stones arranged around the grave instead of a wooden coffin. Similar practices are known from southern Lithuania and have been associated with the Yotvingians, a Baltic people who inhabited parts of the region. However, the researchers caution that the available evidence cannot establish this individual’s precise origins.
All five adult women included in the isotope study appear to have grown up around Vilnius. Some were buried with objects more commonly associated with pagan traditions, raising the possibility that local women converted to Orthodox Christianity after coming into contact with migrant men, perhaps through marriage. This remains an interpretation rather than a proven conclusion.
One woman, buried in grave 312, had consumed millet during both childhood and adulthood. She shared a burial pit with the young migrant from grave 311, and the researchers suggest that they may have been related. Ancient DNA analysis would be needed to determine whether a family connection existed.
The wider collection of grave goods also illustrates the community’s cultural connections. Archaeologists discovered cowrie shells, glass pendants, earrings, rings and ornamental chaplets. The chaplets, made from ornaments attached to leather and fabric, may reflect fashions carried to Lithuania from Halych-Volhynia and the wider Byzantine cultural world.
A diverse city in pagan Lithuania
Vilnius first appears in surviving written sources in letters issued by Grand Duke Gediminas in 1323. These letters invited merchants, craftspeople and other settlers from European cities to come to Lithuania, indicating that Vilnius was already developing as an urban and commercial centre.
Lithuanian rulers also maintained political relationships with neighbouring Ruthenian territories. During the fourteenth century, the expanding Grand Duchy of Lithuania incorporated large areas inhabited by Orthodox Christians. Migration to Vilnius may therefore have been connected with political relationships, trade, religious freedom or opportunities for merchants and artisans.
The researchers also raise the possibility that population movement was influenced by the Black Death between 1346 and 1353. Parts of Eastern and Northern Europe appear to have been less severely affected than regions farther west, potentially making Vilnius a destination for people fleeing the pandemic. However, no individual examined in the study can be directly connected with plague-related migration.
The relatively small sample also limits the conclusions that can be drawn. Only 15 people were analysed from a cemetery containing more than 500 intact graves, and just one produced unmistakably non-local results across all the isotope tests. Additional analysis may reveal whether migration was more widespread within the community.
“Human remains preserve remarkable information about mobility, diet and social interaction that cannot be detected through archaeology alone”, says first author of the study, Giedrė Motuzaitė Matuzevičiūtė from the Faculty of History at Vilnius University and the Lithuanian Institute of History. “By combining archaeological and historical investigations with multi-tissue isotope analysis of human osteological remains, we can, for the first time, directly identify individuals who migrated into medieval Vilnius during the city’s earliest formation. This research shows that Vilnius was already a highly diverse and internationally connected city from the very beginning of its history.”
The article, “Multiproxy analysis reveals migration and potential origins of the first Christians in medieval Vilnius,” by Giedrė Motuzaitė Matuzevičiūtė, Rytis Jonaitis, Irma Kaplūnaitė, Rūta Brindzaitė, Marine Morvan, Christophe Snoeck and Rimantas Jankauskas, is published in Antiquity. Click here to read it.
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Christian migrants helped shape Vilnius while Lithuania remained Europe’s last officially pagan state, new research suggests. Isotope analysis has identified a young person who travelled hundreds of kilometres to the city, probably from Orthodox lands farther south, offering new evidence of the cultural and religious diversity of medieval Vilnius.
The study, published in the journal Antiquity, examined human remains from a large medieval cemetery discovered on Bokšto Street in Vilnius Old Town. The burial ground belonged to a Christian community that lived in the city during the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, before Lithuania officially adopted Catholic Christianity in 1387.
Archaeologists uncovered 532 intact graves, as well as numerous disturbed burials, during eight years of excavations. Radiocarbon dating and analysis of the artefacts indicate that the cemetery remained in use for approximately 150 years.
The community practised Christian burial traditions, placing the dead on their backs in graves aligned from east to west. Only around 10 per cent of the graves contained grave goods, another indication that this was a Christian cemetery. Cross necklaces and metal enkolpions, devotional objects associated with Orthodox Christianity, further reveal the religious identity of at least some of those buried there.
The cemetery stood within the Civitas Ruthenica, or “Ruthenian city,” a district of medieval Vilnius inhabited by an Orthodox Christian population. Although the district was first mentioned in a written source in 1383, the burials show that its Christian community had already been established decades earlier.
“Archaeologists have long suspected that the Civitas Ruthenica community included migrants from the Ruthenian lands. The isotope data now provide direct evidence that at least some individuals buried at Bokšto came from far beyond Lithuania,” explains Dr Rytis Jonaitis of the Lithuanian Institute of History, co-leader of the long-term archaeological investigations at the Bokšto Street cemetery.
Tracing a medieval migrant
The researchers conducted several forms of isotope analysis on the remains of 15 people from the cemetery. They examined tooth enamel and dentine, which preserve information about childhood diet and geographic origins, as well as bone collagen, which reflects a person’s diet during the years before death.
One individual, buried in grave 311, stood out in every set of results. This person died at approximately 18 years of age but had spent their early childhood far from Vilnius.
The chemical evidence preserved in the teeth indicates that the individual’s childhood diet included millet, along with comparatively high levels of food such as meat, dairy products or fish. Millet was becoming less common in Lithuania during this period as colder conditions associated with the beginning of the Little Ice Age favoured crops such as rye and buckwheat.
Evidence from elsewhere in medieval Vilnius supports this dietary transition. A burnt granary previously excavated within the Civitas Ruthenica contained thousands of remains of rye and some buckwheat, but no millet. Farther south, however, millet remained an important crop in territories formerly belonging to the Kievan Rus’.
Strontium and oxygen isotope results also showed that the young person had not grown up around Vilnius. Although the evidence cannot reveal an exact birthplace, the combined results are most consistent with areas in present-day Ukraine or southern Poland, possibly the medieval region of Halych-Volhynia.
By the final years of the individual’s life, their diet had changed. Isotopes preserved in the bones resemble those of the other people buried at Bokšto Street, indicating that the individual adopted local eating habits after arriving in Lithuania. The researchers therefore believe the person probably moved north during adolescence.
The grave contained no objects and otherwise followed Christian funerary customs. According to the researchers, this might reflect an Orthodox Christian upbringing.
Migration and local conversion
Other burials offer less conclusive indications of mobility. A man buried in grave 214 may also have come from a southern region, while two men from graves 139 and 226 had isotope values more closely resembling those found around Kernavė, Lithuania’s first medieval capital, located approximately 34 kilometres north-west of Vilnius.
The person in grave 226 was buried in an unusual manner, with crossed legs and stones arranged around the grave instead of a wooden coffin. Similar practices are known from southern Lithuania and have been associated with the Yotvingians, a Baltic people who inhabited parts of the region. However, the researchers caution that the available evidence cannot establish this individual’s precise origins.
All five adult women included in the isotope study appear to have grown up around Vilnius. Some were buried with objects more commonly associated with pagan traditions, raising the possibility that local women converted to Orthodox Christianity after coming into contact with migrant men, perhaps through marriage. This remains an interpretation rather than a proven conclusion.
One woman, buried in grave 312, had consumed millet during both childhood and adulthood. She shared a burial pit with the young migrant from grave 311, and the researchers suggest that they may have been related. Ancient DNA analysis would be needed to determine whether a family connection existed.
The wider collection of grave goods also illustrates the community’s cultural connections. Archaeologists discovered cowrie shells, glass pendants, earrings, rings and ornamental chaplets. The chaplets, made from ornaments attached to leather and fabric, may reflect fashions carried to Lithuania from Halych-Volhynia and the wider Byzantine cultural world.
A diverse city in pagan Lithuania
Vilnius first appears in surviving written sources in letters issued by Grand Duke Gediminas in 1323. These letters invited merchants, craftspeople and other settlers from European cities to come to Lithuania, indicating that Vilnius was already developing as an urban and commercial centre.
Lithuanian rulers also maintained political relationships with neighbouring Ruthenian territories. During the fourteenth century, the expanding Grand Duchy of Lithuania incorporated large areas inhabited by Orthodox Christians. Migration to Vilnius may therefore have been connected with political relationships, trade, religious freedom or opportunities for merchants and artisans.
The researchers also raise the possibility that population movement was influenced by the Black Death between 1346 and 1353. Parts of Eastern and Northern Europe appear to have been less severely affected than regions farther west, potentially making Vilnius a destination for people fleeing the pandemic. However, no individual examined in the study can be directly connected with plague-related migration.
The relatively small sample also limits the conclusions that can be drawn. Only 15 people were analysed from a cemetery containing more than 500 intact graves, and just one produced unmistakably non-local results across all the isotope tests. Additional analysis may reveal whether migration was more widespread within the community.
“Human remains preserve remarkable information about mobility, diet and social interaction that cannot be detected through archaeology alone”, says first author of the study, Giedrė Motuzaitė Matuzevičiūtė from the Faculty of History at Vilnius University and the Lithuanian Institute of History. “By combining archaeological and historical investigations with multi-tissue isotope analysis of human osteological remains, we can, for the first time, directly identify individuals who migrated into medieval Vilnius during the city’s earliest formation. This research shows that Vilnius was already a highly diverse and internationally connected city from the very beginning of its history.”
The article, “Multiproxy analysis reveals migration and potential origins of the first Christians in medieval Vilnius,” by Giedrė Motuzaitė Matuzevičiūtė, Rytis Jonaitis, Irma Kaplūnaitė, Rūta Brindzaitė, Marine Morvan, Christophe Snoeck and Rimantas Jankauskas, is published in Antiquity. Click here to read it.
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