Panemunės pilis ir jos aplinka

Abstract

In implementing the project, Adapting Panemunė Castle and the Surrounding Park to Public Cultural Tourism, in 2011, a great deal of earthwork, which required field surveys and evaluations, was foreseen inside Panemunė Castle and in its vicinity (jurbarkas District, Skirsnemunė eldership, Pilis I village). The entire work area was over 3500 m², including the detailed investigation of about 2000 m². The excavations were conducted in three stages (Fig. 1). After studying the entire cultural layer of the castle yard and making a stratigraphic section across it, it was discovered that a gravelly, sandy, and clayey oblong hill with a natural spring (in the SW part of the yard) and a gentle slope on the S side had been selected for the castle site. This circumstance was used practically, i.e. no very deep trenches needed to be dug for the foundations of the S building. During construction, the slope was levelled using various construction waste. The aquiferous vein near the surface in the SW part of the yard was probably used for a well. Two paving fragments were discovered. The first was found at a depth of 16–20 cm from the present-day surface at the site of the trench running near the S building and on the edge near the junction of the E and S buildings and near the N building at roughly its middle. The second (a gutter sloping down to the S) was unearthed at the abutting corners of the E and S buildings at a depth of 50 cm and at the edge of the S building (Fig. 2), closer to the W building. The stones of this paving were bigger and laid on a layer of clean whitish sand up to 15 cm thick. This paving should be connected with the mid-17th-century reconstruction of the palace when the S building became the centre. It is very likely that the yard was never completely paved and had probably been paved only at the some of the more important and more intensely used places