Jonas Puzinas

Jonas Puzinas (October 1, 1905 – April 14, 1978) was a Lithuanian archaeologist and specialist on the prehistory of Lithuania.

Puzinas was born on October 1 1905 in Svaronys near Deltuva to a family of well-to-do peasants.

After graduating from Ukmergė Gymnasium, with the help of Steponas Kairys, he was accepted to the University of Lithuania.

He belonged to the first generation of Lithuanian scholars who matured in independent Lithuania (1918–40).

He was the first scientifically trained archaeologist of Lithuania and he laid the foundations, including some of the basic terminology and periodization, for future archaeological studies.

His work in Lithuania was cut short by World War II.

The work detailed the history of archaeological studies in Lithuania up to 1918 and their effect on the Lithuanian identity.

It was more a work of history than archaeology.

There he studied Lithuanian language and literature, comparative linguistics, and pedagogy in 1925–29.

Even as a gymnasium student, Puzinas showed interest in Lithuanian culture: he collected local Lithuanian songs and myths (sent to Jurgis Dovydaitis) and local vocabulary (sent to editors of the Academic Dictionary of Lithuanian).

As a university student, Puzinas became a secretary of Antanas Smetona, President of Lithuania, and helped him edit and organize his correspondence and other paperwork.

With Smetona's help, he received a scholarship of 20,000 litas from the Ministry of Education that enabled him to continue his studies in a Western university.

He was the first to receive such scholarship; as a condition of the scholarship, he had to repay 10% of his post-graduation wages to the ministry.

At first, Puzinas considered University of Königsberg, but upon advice of professor Jurgis Gerulis, he chose University of Heidelberg where he studied prehistory, comparative linguistics, and classical archaeology in 1930–34.

Puzinas studied under Ernst Wahle, who had excavated in Latvia and was familiar with Baltic archaeology.

Wahle was Puzinas' doctoral advisor, mentor, and even friend; his influence is noticeable in many of Puzinas' works.

In 1935, Puzinas successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis on prehistoric research and the Lithuanian National Revival.

The thesis was published in Kaunas in 1935 in its original German language (Vorgeschichtsforschung und Nationalbewusstsein in Litauen).

The thesis shows minor influence of the budding school of thought that material remains can be equated to ethnicity (Kossinna's law) that formed the basis for Nazi archaeology.

Echoes of this theory can be found in Puzinas' later works as well.

After studies in Germany, Puzinas returned to Kaunas.

He became director of Kaunas City Museum, where he briefly worked as a student.

He inherited a museum that more closely resembled a storage space of old artifacts than a modern museum.

He also became an assistant professor at the Faculty of Humanities of Vytautas Magnus University.

Among his students were Marija Gimbutas, Pranas Kulikauskas, Rimutė Jablonskytė-Rimantienė.

He was one of the few professors at the faculty who received proper education in their field of study.

He lectured on 20 topics, including broad topics, such as Indo-Europeans, vikings, prehistory of Europe.

Lectures were often accompanied by field trips to museum or historical sites, even experiments (for example, recreating control of fire by early humans).

Between 1935 and 1944 he published about 150 articles and other publications.

When Vytautas the Great War Museum was opened in 1936, Puzinas developed its prehistory exhibition based on the modern museum practices.

The exhibition was officially opened in January 1938 by president Antanas Smetona.

For this accomplishment, Puzinas was awarded the Order of Vytautas the Great.

He participated in 27 archaeological excavations, mostly burials, but showed no great enthusiasm for field work, often supervising the excavations only on paper.

He organized obtained data and exhibits, visited museums abroad, attended international archaeological conventions, published articles on prehistory and archaeology in Lithuanian press and Lietuviškoji enciklopedija, the first encyclopaedia in Lithuanian.

He also made presentations to schoolchildren to popularize the field.

In 1939, he became privatdozent for his seminal work and habilitation thesis Naujausių proistorinių tyrinėjimų duomenys (Findings of the Most Recent Archaeological Explorations).

This work became a textbook on prehistory of Lithuania.

In 1944, he retreated to Germany and then to the United States.

There he continued his academic work, notably editing Lithuanian encyclopedias.

It was superseded only by Lietuvos archeologijos bruožai published in 1961.