Profesoriaus Albino Kuncevičiaus archeologinę veiklą pažymint

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Preface
Commemorating the Scientific Activity of Professor Albinas Kuncevičius The 18 th volume of Archaeologia Lituana is dedicated to Professor PhD Albinas Kuncevičius on the occasion of his 60 th anniversary, taking into account this important academic and his organizational achievements. Two main areas of Kuncevičius' archeological activity could be distinguished: medieval archaeology and heritage protection. Besides these two fields, there is another one that could be called archaeological management - it is the organization, heading and coordination of the different kinds of archaeological activities.The selection of an effective research strategy, initiativity and determination are one of Kuncevičius's exceptional traits. This can be seen only by listing his past and present working positions, ocupations and achievements that have a significant influence on the processes taking place in Lithuanian archeology.
In honor of the jubilee, this volume begins with the conversation between the journal's Editor-in-Chief Algimantas Merkevičius and Albinas Kuncevičius. This scientific genre was chosen in order to get a more detailed and authentic view of the celebrant's archaeological activities and to better understand his attitudes regarding various existing issues in the field of Lithuanian archeology. In our conversation, readers will find more detailed biographical information, as well as the authentic approach of Kuncevičius to the various issues of past and present archeology.
This volume also publishes the bibliography of Kuncevičius's scientific publications that ranges from the first articles that he had wrote after graduating from Vilnius University until the end of 2017. The bibliography was compiled specially for this volume of our journal by Gintautas Zabiela.
In addition to these two first publications of the current volume, five scientific articles were published, the chronology and subject matter of which are very diverse, ranging from the Late Bronze Age to the Modern Times, and from burrial customs to leather footwear research and the review of the origins of archaeological heritage protection in Lithuania.
The origins and development of archaeological heritage in Lithuania, despite some earlier published articles, which appeared in different publications, are still not proprerly analyzed and reviewed; therefore, the idea of Kuncevičius and Poškienė to write a cycle of articles on the origins and development of Lithuanian archaeological heritage protection is important and very welcome. In this issue of Archaeologia Lituana, we published the first article of this cycle, dedicated to the origins of archaeological heritage protection in Lithuania in the 19 th century and to the early development of this process untill the beginning of the 20 th century. The article discusses the archaeological situation in Lithuania at that time and the influence from other countries on the concepts and practices of archaeological heritage protection.
Lijana Muradian, a PhD student of Vilnius University, published her carefully collected, analyzed and interpreted data on the burial cemeteries and some burial customs of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age from sites found in the northwestern part of Lithuania. The 19 burial sites, in which 182 graves were counted, are the "database" of this article. To determine the exact number of graves in the excavated burial sites of the period is a difficult task, especially knowing the great destruction of some of these burial sities. The author of the article has divided all graves of the mentioned period into four groups according to their arrangements and their different types of stone constructions. The data obtained after the analyses of the graves allowed the author to reconstruct some features of the social organization of those communities that lived in the area of Northwest Lithuania. The obtained data allowed the author to state that the Lithuanian coastal society was already differentiated and hierarchical during the period under consideration.

Preface
In recent years, the number of archaeological research in small Lithuanina towns have increased significantly, and archaeological material of the Middle Age and New Age has been substantially increasing. Unfortunately, this types of material are still rarely analyzed and published in Lithuania. In some rare cases, at the time of the excavations, leather articles - mainly fragments of footwear -were found in the archeological layers and could be analyzed by archaeologists. Therefore, an article in which the leather footwear researcher Arūnas Puškorius, together with Atas Žvirblis, analyzed leather findings found in 2013 and 2015 in the town of Žiežmariai during archaeological excavations is indisputably important. The article reveals the peculiarities of leather footwear production, its design, sizes, production technologies and the discovery circumstances of these products, the influence from other countries on the production and use of these items, and even the fashion of the footwear of that time.
The stoneware found in Klaipėda Castle and the Old Town during the archaeological excavations and that is stored in the History Museum of Lithuania Minor, dated back to 14 th to 18 th centuries, was analyzed by Viktorija Ziabreva, a postgraduate of Vilnius University. The author of this article submitted data about the main centers of stoneware production in Europe, analyzed the technological aspects of production as well as the functional groups of this type of ceramic pieces found in Klaipėda's Old Town and Klaipėda Castle. According to the author, this type of ceramics could be the one of social indicators of the society of that time, indicating the presence of the high social status of the inhabitants of Klaipėda Castle and the early town.
A collection of data on artillery guns from the 16 th -18 th centuries, which are stored in Lithuanian museums and in a private collection, was reviewed by Liudvikas Vasiliauskas. In the catalogue-esque article, these guns are decripted, classified, some characteristics of these guns being given and information about their storage locations being provided. The article is supplemented with the photos of these guns. For 25 artillery guns, a chemical composition of their pipe alloys were produced.
In the section Our Jubilees, Professor Mykolas Michelbertas reviewed the scientific activity of longtime Archaeologia Lituana editor Wojciech Nowakowski on the occasion of his 65 th birthday, focusing on the cooperation of Nowakowski with the archaeologists of Lithuania and Vilnius University and his works on the topic of the Baltic archeology. As noted by Michelbertas, Nowakowski is a professor of the Institute of Archeology at the University of Warsaw and former director of this institute who contributed heavily to expanding Polish-Lithuanian archaeological cooperation. In many of his publications, Lithuanian archeological materials are included, and some of his archaeological works are devoted to the analysis of Lithuanian archeological materials discovered at some sites. We congratulate to Professor Wojciech Nowakowski on his 65 th birthday! In our traditional chapter titled Scientific Life Chronicle, Violeta Vasiliauskienė overviews the key academic activities that teachers and students of the Archaeology Department had undertaken in 2017.
We hope that this volume of Archeologia Lituana will be interesting and useful not only to archaeologists and students of archaeology but also to a wider circle of readers.