The article examines the results of the 2012 and 2013 archaeological excavations of Skrundas Krievu kalns hill-fort, situated in western Latvia. Krievu kalns was listed as a site in the 1920s, but it was not regarded as a hill-fort. During a site inspection, striated pottery was discovered, and this indicated that it might be numbered as a Late Bronze Age and Pre-Roman Iron Age habitation. Excavations revealed the site to be a hill-fort that was fortified in the 11th to the ninth century BC with a palisade made of vertical timbers. In the eighth to the fiftth century BC, the defences were moved outwards, thus enlarging the living area. There was possibly even later a third fence. Krievu kalns may be classed as a Late Bronze Age hill-fort with striated pottery, reflecting the characteristic Bronze Age cultural traditions of western Latvia.

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Latvia in the 11th–13th century poses a curious case for the coexistence of two different practices of Baltic ware production. The Baltic ware pots from lower reaches of the River Daugava and from the Courland region look not just stylistically, but also technologically different. Our paper assessed the production traces by using macro-observations, Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) and extensive ethnographic material of Slavic pottery production of the 1900s, as well as using modern replicas as visual aids to assist in the identification of the principal coil attachment methods. The results showed that potters from the lower reaches of Daugava used the wheel’s rotation extensively during the shaping process of Baltic ware. The production of the pots required the potter to possess a level of technical skill which implied a level of professionalisation. Baltic ware from Courland was less technically complicated and used comparatively more of the methods of handmade pottery production.

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The paper is dedicated to the technological aspects of pottery production in the Late Bronze Age in the territory of Latvia. For the purposes of the current research, nine pottery assemblages were analysed. As hillforts appeared in the Late Bronze Age, they represented the dominant aspects of pottery production in this period, therefore this type of settlement was chosen for the analysis. Two types of analytical techniques were used for this research: visual (macroscopic) and ceramic petrography (micro­scopic). For the petrographic analysis, 78 thin sections were made from all the analysed hillfort ceramic collections. In this paper, the structure of clay, as well as temper, vessel shape, size and wall thickness were analysed and grouped.