Abstract
The article is a study of pendants from the Aesti burials of the Roman period. The analysis of the shapes and images of the moons from the 1st millennium AD Southeastern Baltic Sea funerary complexes allows us to draw the following preliminary conclusions. At the beginning of our era, moons as the details of horse headbands ascended to the ancient lunar symbols and were amulets. In the mid-1st millennium, “three-horned” moons were distributed in the Southeastern Baltic region, having gone through three stages of degradation. In the 5th –6th centuries AD, “bird” moons are known in the Southeastern Baltic countries, which are derivatives of one of the versions of the German pagan canon. At the fi nal phase of the Merovingian era, the manufacture of derivatives of “bird” moons ceased in Masuria. In the 9th–11th centuries, the Scandinavian and Slavic moons were to be common in the lands of the Prussians. The small quantity of the lunar moons in the archaeological material of the Prussians most likely indicates their absence among attributes of a lunar cult in their culture.
Keywords
Amber region, Balts, Germans, pendants, moons
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