KAUP 2014: ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS & RESEARCH HISTORY

ABSTRACT The article is a report on field activities of 2014 at a renowned location of Kaup forest near Wiskiauten/Viskiautai, nowadays Kaliningrad oblast of Russia, and a sentimental journey through the research history in a region at the crossroads of ancient communication webs, and more recently – of diverse political agendas. Field activities focused on the so‐called Barrow 1, the only known mound at Kaup dated to the Neolithic, otherwise dotted with burials of the Viking Age. It was an attempt to reconstruct barrow architecture, which has resulted in a deconstruction of previous views based on rather scarce excavation reports of the 19th – early 20th century. The Neolithic barrow of Kaup remains a unique testimony of the social complexity and spatial awareness of the early 3rd millennium BC when Europe was under the spell of the Corded Ware and other related cultural phenomena.