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Utena Tourism Information Center

Old cemetery of Jasonys Manor and the grave of archaeologist Pranciškus Vilčinskis

Monuments

In the 18th – 19th centuries, the Vilčinskis family of minor nobles owned and lived in Jasonys Manor. Inclined toward patriotism, the enlightened Vilčinskis family took an interest in Lithuania's history, culture and archaeology, and participated in the 1831 and 1863 uprisings. The family built a wooden chapel in Jasonys and established a carriage workshop.
Pranciškus Vilčinskis was born in Jasonys in 1796 and became one of the pioneers of Lithuanian archaeology. Very little biographical information about him is available, but it is known that he explored the Narkūnai, Pakalniai, Šeimyniškiai, Vitkūnai, and Sungailiškis hill-forts near Utena, the Užpaliai, Kustai, and Šeimyniškiai burial mounds, the Ukmergė hill-fort, the burial mounds located in present-day Belarus near the Ralovshchizna Manor, the burial mound near the village of Dorzha, and burial mounds in Ušaitis. Some of the archaeological finds collected during the digs are held in the largest Russian museum, the Hermitage.
In the first half of the 19th century, Pranciškus Vilčinskis was among the most prominent figures in the collecting stage of the development of archaeological science in Lithuania, alongside Dionizas Poška, Eustachijus Tiškevičius, Teodoras Narbutas, Adomas Honorijus Kirkoras, and Konstantinas Tiškevičius. In 1847, Pranciškus Vilčinskis became an associate member of the Archaeology and Numismatics Society located in Saint Petersburg (later called the Imperial Archaeology Society, the Imperial Russian Archaeology Society, the Russian Archaeology Society), and later, a corresponding member. He directly contributed to the establishment of the society's museum, donating a portion of his collection of stone hatchets. In a list of the museum's exhibits published in 1869, among the archaeological finds from present-day Lithuania, there are other artefacts found by Pranciškus Vilčinskis, from Užpaliai hill-fort, an arrowhead from Narkūnai hill-fort, and finds discovered during digs in the Vilnius region.
Pranciškus Vilčinskis died in 1859. He was buried in the old cemetery of Jasonys Manor, where a roofed chapel-pole (author Stasys Karanauskas) was erected in his memory in 1984.
The site is listed on the Registry of Cultural Heritage Properties.

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