Ancient Europe, Northeast Europe, 12 Lithuania (Founded: 1253): Final Palaeolithic (13,000-9700 BC)

*see Europe>Northeast Europe>Lithuania>Introduction

Because the Hamburgian culture in Lithuania is represented by only five poorly preserved sites (excluding the mixed Kašėtos collection), rather than permanent settlement, the consensus points towards occasional visits by hunting parties. Their presence is evidenced by temporary camps containing stone tools, hide scrapers and, to stop reindeer from a distance, darts. Using an indirect percussion punch technique, knappers detached a series of uniform blades from a prepared core of local flint. A small notch was then made on one side at the base of each blade to create a distinct shoulder that could be securely tied to the shaft with animal sinew and resin.

As the climate softened, the barren subarctic tundra gave way to open birch and pine woodlands. Reindeer, which compete poorly with other deer species in temperate climates, were forced to retreat further north. This allowed solitary forest game like elk and roe deer to expand into the newly forested areas, where closed woodland environments required different hunting weapons to those used on the open plains.

Evidence of the Federmesser culture, a technocomplex rooted the Northern European Plain, has been found in the southern tip of Lithuania. This culture is primarily traced through its small, curved stone blades with blunted backs. While these points resembled modern penknife blades, their backs were intentionally dulled so they could be firmly glued and bound into wooden arrow shafts. This lightweight system allowed hunters to launch arrows through narrow gaps in the foliage.

Pioneering groups expanding from Denmark and northern Germany brought the Bromme culture into Lithuania, where the landscape was shifting between tundra and open forest. Rather than chasing herds over open plains, these hunters utilised shifting river valleys to ambush migrating reindeer and solitary elk. Their signature weapon was the Lyngby tanged point – a heavy, robust spearhead with a wide, crudely flaked base designed to survive high-impact strikes against massive bone and thick hide. Because ground stone axes had not yet been developed, they pioneered the massive Lyngby reindeer-antler axe as their primary heavy tool, relying on it for breaking bone and clearing brushwood.

The abrupt cooling of the Younger Dryas eliminated forest cover, replacing it with subarctic tundra. Ahrensburgian populations expanding across the North European Plain introduced a distinct bow-and-arrow tool-kit to Lithuania. Knappers used indirect percussion punch techniques to detach uniform flint blades from prepared local cores. These blanks were systematically fractured and retouched into miniature tanged points and sharp, angled inserts. Slotted into wooden shafts, these lithic components formed lightweight composite arrows optimized for hunting migratory tundra game.

Swiderian groups entering Lithuania from Poland produced bow-and-arrow components to hunt migrating reindeer herds. Moving into the hills flanking the valleys of the Nemunas and Neris rivers, they established camps to spot game moving through the valleys below. Knappers struck straight, uniform blades from alternate ends (bidirectional) of the same flint core. They fractured these pieces and removed the bulb of percussion – the swelling on the flat underside of each blade’s base directly beneath the place where it was struck. This created the arrowheads that sat inside wooden shafts, providing a standardised weapon system across the Lithuanian landscape.