In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of investigations of old churches and monasteries in Lithuania. At the same time, the number of investigations of burial crypts located in churches has been on the increase too. Said increase has been determined by the implementation of the requirements set to cultural heritage conservation (investigations are considered to be a necessary or integral part of church management works) and the need to handle the remains lying in the crypts (which, due to former plundering or other reasons, are discovered disgraced and do not meet the requirements for respectful burial), as well as the desire to identify the buried people.
Burials in the crypts of churches are, first of all, perceived as an object of archaeology and physical anthropology (See more: Lithuania. Research: From Archaeology to Bioarcheology) in Lithuania. According to the established norms and practices, such objects are subject to the requirements set to scientific destructive investigations of archaeological heritage; therefore it is necessary to follow The Heritage Maintenance Regulation Archaeological Heritage Maintenance. In the Regulation the object of archaeological heritage is defined as “sites of past economic or defensive activities, a residential, burial or cult site, objects that are totally or partially underwater, whose only or one of the main sources of scientific data is archaeological investigations and finds, as well as an immovable cultural heritage object or a site entered on the Register of Cultural Heritage that has valuable features of archaeological nature”1“Įsakymas “Dėl paveldo tvarkybos reglamento PTR 2.13.01:2011 “Archeologinio paveldo tvarkyba” patvirtininimo”, Minister of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, 16.08.2011, No. ĮV-538, Teisės aktų registras, article 10, [accessed 01.09.2018], [electronic], available at: https://e-seimas.lrs.lt/portal/legalAct/lt/TAD/TAIS.405666/PlahhdfryW.. On the basis of the same Regulation, age rating is established for archaeological cultural heritage: “the archaeological layer is a cultural layer that had been formed by 1800, whose archaeological investigations or archaeological finds are the only or one of the main sources of scientific data”2Ibid., article 10.. Another provision of the Regulation also relates to the age rating: “it is recommended not to destroy the remains excavated from the graves dating back to the 18th-19th century, if there is no necessity and after recording them, to bury them again”3Ibid., article 19.13.. It is here that the system starts “to hamper” and its flaws appear. There are cases of burials in the crypts when the subject matter of the investigation is too “young” according to the chronological criteria established for archaeological heritage. As a result, the maintenance procedure becomes as though unregulated, unless these objects are treated as cemeteries and the definition of earthworks is applied to them: according to the aforementioned Regulation, archaeological investigations are necessary if “earth-moving works are planned to be performed […] in the cemeteries that no longer function or in the cemeteries that are of limited use, are entered in the Register of Cultural Property”4Ibid., article 12.7.. Hence, normative definitions and the requirements set are not properly adapted to the specificity of the burials in church crypts and their investigations.
According to legislation, destructive investigations of the burials discovered in crypts can be carried out only by certified specialists5Ibid., article 3.. They are responsible for providing the results of anthropological investigations of the remains necessary to be carried out in archaeological reports and, when the architectural heritage is discovered, they are also responsible for providing the data of architectural investigations. The remains discovered are then taken to the Department of Anatomy, Histology and Anthropology of the Faculty of Medicine of Vilnius University. However, no general rules on how long the bioarchaeological research should take, what additional data (neither that “minimum” of the data which is obligatory to be presented in the report of archaeological investigations) should be collected, where and how this information should be stored and made public, and how the remains should be handled following their investigations, are available. Decisions are made on the case-by-case basis. Archaeological investigation reports are kept and made publicly available at several institutions – the Library of Lithuanian Institute of History and the Centre of Cultural Heritage, as well as the museums that have accepted archaeological finds. However, the research data, which are not included in these reports (and this may be the case with the data of bioarchaeological investigations) are stored at the discretion of the individual researchers or according to the procedure established by the institutions where they work. This information is not systematically accumulated, which makes it difficult to understand the documentation of different investigations.
Apart from gaps in regulation, there are other problems too. It should be admitted that archaeological investigations carried out in churches are often of limited scope (confined to the fulfilment of heritage protection conservation requirements), and the data obtained during theses investigations are usually fragmented and therefore are of limited use to broader interpretation6Rimydas Laužikas, “Church and Monastery Archaeology”, A Hundred Years of Archeological Discoveries of Lithuania, compiled by Gintautas Zabiela, Zenonas Baubonis, Eglė Marcinkevičiūtė, Vilnius: Lietuvos archeologijos draugija, 2016, p. 474-487.. Many scientists and specialists point to the need of complex or combined investigations (See more: Nesvizh. 2016 and 2017)7Simona Matuzevičiūtė, Rimantas Jankauskas, “Palaidojimų kriptose tyrinėjimų galimybės ir problemos: Renavo kapinių koplyčios kriptos tyrimų pavyzdys”, Lietuvos dvarai: kultūros paveldo tyrinėjimai (series Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis, vol. 55), compiled by Algė Andriulytė, Rasa Butvilaitė, Vilnius: Vilniaus dailės akademijos leidykla, 2009, p. 149-163.. For example, the aim of crypt investigations is often the identification of the buried people (See more: Nesvizh. Introduction: Making Silence of the Centuries Speak; Nesvizh. Introduction: Strategies and Questions). In this case, DNA tests are very important, however, they are made especially rarely because the genetic data is not always available and the processes of obtaining and comparing it are very complicated. Besides, it is not always possible to apply the method of photoapplication (the comparison of the skull with a portrait or a photograph) because of the lack of iconography. The specificity of the portrait genre of different periods also has an impact on the accuracy of the investigation. The identification of the remains is most often possible only by comparing the features of a particular person recorded in written documents, testimonies of witnesses or other sources with biological data discovered in the remains (gender, age, height, lifestyle and traces left by diseases in the bones, tissues, etc.), and on the basis of burial items and other artefacts. To sum up, not only bioarchaeological investigations but also the knowledge of iconography, history, art historical sources, historical and genealogical data is necessary. Architectural and engineering investigations are necessary to perceive a crypt as a construction.
Justina Poškienė
1. | ↑ | “Įsakymas “Dėl paveldo tvarkybos reglamento PTR 2.13.01:2011 “Archeologinio paveldo tvarkyba” patvirtininimo”, Minister of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, 16.08.2011, No. ĮV-538, Teisės aktų registras, article 10, [accessed 01.09.2018], [electronic], available at: https://e-seimas.lrs.lt/portal/legalAct/lt/TAD/TAIS.405666/PlahhdfryW. |
2. | ↑ | Ibid., article 10. |
3. | ↑ | Ibid., article 19.13. |
4. | ↑ | Ibid., article 12.7. |
5. | ↑ | Ibid., article 3. |
6. | ↑ | Rimydas Laužikas, “Church and Monastery Archaeology”, A Hundred Years of Archeological Discoveries of Lithuania, compiled by Gintautas Zabiela, Zenonas Baubonis, Eglė Marcinkevičiūtė, Vilnius: Lietuvos archeologijos draugija, 2016, p. 474-487. |
7. | ↑ | Simona Matuzevičiūtė, Rimantas Jankauskas, “Palaidojimų kriptose tyrinėjimų galimybės ir problemos: Renavo kapinių koplyčios kriptos tyrimų pavyzdys”, Lietuvos dvarai: kultūros paveldo tyrinėjimai (series Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis, vol. 55), compiled by Algė Andriulytė, Rasa Butvilaitė, Vilnius: Vilniaus dailės akademijos leidykla, 2009, p. 149-163. |