ABSTRACT
In any general assessment of Russian archaeological studies in Lithuania from 1886 until the First World War, the most positive features were the Ninth Conference of Russian Archaeologists held at Vilnius in 1893 and the large-scale works by Pokrovskii. The first professional archaeologist in Lithuania was Jonas Puzinas, he analyzed the collected materials in the Lithuanian museums and managed to prepare and publish the first Lithuanian archaeological textbook. The classics of Marxism archaeology as such was scarcely able to be used for political purposes, archaeologists were less oppressed than historians. Lithuanian archaeologists nowadays believe that Balts have been living on the eastern Baltic sea-coast since the end of the Stone Age. Therefore for the neighbours it is hard to make their territorial claims on the basis of archaeology. This issue has been more broadly investigated by the historians, and this is related to the fact that the foreigners and the communities of national minorities used to live mostly in towns.
