Western Baltic culture


The Western Baltic culture was the westernmost branch of the Baltic peoples, representing a distinct archaeological culture of the Bronze Age and Iron Age, along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. They included tribes such as the Old Prussians, Galindians, Yotvingians and Skalvians, in addition to the little-known Pomeranian Balts or Western Balts proper, in the area now known as Pomerania.

Location and territory

According to Marija Gimbutas, the Baltic culture of the Early and Middle Bronze Age covered a territory which, at its maximal extent, included "all of Pomerania almost to the mouth of the Oder, and the whole Vistula basin to Silesia in the south-west" before the spread of the Lusatian culture to the region and was inhabited by the ancestors of the later Old Prussians.

Art and structures

The Balts decorated their pots by creating "deep incisions and ridges around the neck." Baltic graves consisted of huts made out of timber, or stone cists with floors of pavement "encircled by timber posts".