On Lithuania´s silver age. A rare book by archaeologist Laima Vaitkunskiene

In my neighbourhood live many immigrants from former Soviet Union countries, not only from Russia but from Kasakhstan, Ucraine and Lithuania. Some of them are socalled "Russlanddeutsche", members of the
German minority in Russia and the Soviet Union; others, esp. those from Ucraine and Lithuania, are Jews; though most of them in Germany have to make their living on social welfare, many of those immigrants are well educated academics, engineers, mathematicians, chemists or physicians. And they brought their books with them. Some of these books end up at the junk dealer´s around the corner, for the reason of monetary tightment, decease etc.. So I came across a very remarkable book written in Lithuanian language:

Laima Vaitkunskiene. Sidabras senoves Lietuvoje. Vilnius "Mokslas" 1981, 125 pages.

Subsequent to the Lithuanian text is a summary in Russian (cyrillic) and in German: the book deals with the country´s rich archaeological stock of silver items: jewelry, weapons and harnesses from ad 2-13. As the author tells us, silver was of huge cultural and religious importance in ancient Lithuania and connected with beauty, wealth and magical power, much more thand gold or iron: Lithuanian mythology tells many tales of enchanted silver treasures. As there were no silver mines in the country, the precious material was robbed during wars or was imported, e.g. from the Romans, and made to jewelry. The items shown in the book were digged during archaeological excavations.

The author, Laima Vaitkunskiene, was stuff member of the Lithuanian Institute of History and Archaeology at Vilnius University. She also researched the importance of amber for
Lithuanian culture. The book is in a very fine, almost flawless condition, with undamaged dust wrapper and cover, cutting and pages; flawless paper, friendly to the nose. Many photos and drawings. The book is rare and, at the moment, not available on the internet. It is kind of a standard works and cited in many articles online concerning Lithuanian history and archaeology. Various libraries have copies of the book in stock, in Lithuania and at the Lithuanian Research and Studies Center in Chicago, USA. Currently unavailable at Amazon.

For further information, please send me an e-mail, if you like.