Archaeological sites within the beds of present-day rivers, including fishing sites, are very rare across Europe; therefore, riverine fishing in the Holocene is known incomparably less well than fishing in lakes, lagoons, or even the sea. It would seem that the main reason for this situation is the much greater scale of bank and bed erosion in rivers caused by current action. But is this really the case? To address this question, between 2015 and 2025 we carried out a complete visual survey of the riverbed along the entire 80 km length of the Žeimena River. The river flows in northeastern Lithuania and belongs to the Baltic Sea basin. We identified 22 sites with at least 35 concentrations of wooden piles (remains of fishing weirs), dated from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages. While medieval and Iron Age fishing sites yielded almost no other finds, the Stone and Bronze Age sites produced about 1,500 artefacts made of bone, antler, flint, and other lithic materials, as well as wooden objects and pottery sherds. The results of the research on the Žeimena suggest that the channel sediments of present-day European lowland rivers, flowing through landscapes shaped by the last glaciation, still preserve numerous archaeological sites—sometimes dating to the Stone Age and sometimes with excellent preservation of organic materials—but they remain undiscovered because systematic surveys of riverbeds are rarely undertaken.

First Author: Gytis Piličiauskas

Co-Authors: Elena Pranckėnaitė, Kęstutis Peseckas, Aldas Matiukas, Lukas Gaižauskas, Divonis Piličiauskas, Grzegorz Osipowicz, Giedrė Piličiauskienė

Keywords:
underwater archaeology
rivers
fishing weirs
Holocene
Žeimena River
Lithuania