The Civitas Rutenica area, inhabited by Orthodox believers, emerged in Vilnius in the late 13th century and early 14th century. The development of this part of the city can be traced all through the 14th century. The cemetery that was discovered in the central part of Civitas Rutenica reflects cultural and social changes in the Orthodox community. Christian burial rites were practised in this cemetery. Several graves contained luxurious grave goods, including jewellery, some of which was common to the Slavs, and some of which had local origins. As an integrated approach to burial traditions indicates, people of the Orthodox faith were buried in this cemetery. According to written sources, the elite from Rus' arrived in Vilnius at that time. An analysis of anthropological material reveals some features of the social structure of the Orthodox community.

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I n t r o d u c t i o n 'A town can be seen as a map, in which separate areas have different and opposing social features' (Giddens 2005, p.531). In 13th and 14th-century Vilnius, several such areas were established: the Upper Castle on Gediminas Hill; the low ground around the northern foot of the hill and Altar Hills, 1 which were pagan areas; the present-day site of the cathedral, a Catholic mission; and the 38th to 45th quarters of the Old Town of modern Vilnius, the Civitas Rutenica quarter. Orthodox newcomers were likely to know the layout of the town and the principles of urbanisation. At the end of the 13th century 2 and the beginning of the 14th century, Civitas Rutenica was developing in the most practical and strategically important place around the Old Town of modern Vilnius. This is the present-day 41st quarter and neighbouring quarters of the Old Town. This is also confirmed by fragments of domestic Slavic pottery, found on present-day Latako St (Vaitkevičius 2004, p.232). The first settlements were around a corridor between the second and the third terraces (Fig. 1) (Valionienė 2009, p.443). This corridor was a crossroads between major trading routes. It linked routes leading to the east (Smolensk, Polotsk), the south (Medininkai, Rūdininkai), the west (a part of the route to Trakai), the north (the Upper Castle, the Lower Castle, Altar Hills, and Livonia). Next to the crossroads, one of the first Orthodox churches of Civitas Rutenica was built (St Parasceve, or Piatnitskaia; in Russian Св. Параскева, Пятницкая). The location of Civitas Rute-1 Altar Hills, on the right bank of the River Vilnia, east of Gediminas Hill. 2 The latest finds in Vilnius, at 6 Bokšto St, enable us to trace the presence of the Orthodox community in Vilnius to the mid-13th century. nica was also good because it was a safe distance from pagan areas. By the beginning of the 15th century, there were already 12 Orthodox churches in the Civitas Rutenica quarter. Research into them started in the 19th century. These were general studies (Batiushkov 1872; Krachkovskii 1897; Vinogradov 1908). Throughout the entire 20th century, the quantity of material for research increased. New historic and architectural research was carried out, and the material is now in the Vilnius Regional Archive. The most important thing is that new archaeological material is now available, and the opportunity has arisen to include data from geomorphological research. Despite this, there is still a lack of new general studies (within the boundaries of the location). Works that touch on the topic are based mostly on studies from the 19th century; however, their authors lacked modern data and were subject to the strong influence of the political situation. Therefore, the aim of this article is to evaluate impartially and anew the location-related question in the Civitas Rutenica quarter, introducing new data. The Civitas Rutenica is based on the cultural layer and its extent (Vaitkevičius 2010, p.62), and also on the arrangement of churches in accordance with...

Lithuania was the country to remain pagan longest in Europe, but it was not isolated from the rest of Europe. Although the locals in the late 13th – late 14th centuries were still mostly pagans, Lithuania’s grand dukes appreciated the benefits of Christian immigrants. These Christians brought not only their religion, but also a knowledge of crafts, their culture, and their own traditions. Although Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox, mainly wished to settle in Lithuania for economic reasons rather than from a desire to Christianise it, their presence in pagan Vilnius left traces, one of which, visible archaeologically, is the inhumation cemetery on Bokšto Street, where Orthodox Christians began to bury their dead in the last decades of the 13th century. By supplementing the historical context with this cemetery’s material, it is possible to talk about how the Orthodox community influenced the city’s urban landscape, burial traditions, and crafts. Keywords: Medieval Vilnius, Christianity, cemetery, cultural influence.

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