Purciems White Dune

Nice, short loop-type wooden trail along the Pilsupe river through the pine forest up to the 20 m high Purciems White Dune. Few simple viewing platforms on the way opening a spectacular view on the white sand outcrops and the Pilsupe river banks. The dune holds more than 6000-year-old artifacts of human material culture. Few ups and downs, but easy to walk.
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The trail climbs up and down along the bluffs of lower River Pilsupe and reveals a fascinating sight of three white dune exposures (the largest is called the White Dune). The trail is 900m long, and the White Dune is ca 20m high. It has formed ca 6000 years ago, in the period of the Littorina Sea which is a foregoer of the Baltic Sea. Here the first Stone Age settlement on the North Western coast of Latvia has been found in 1934 by geologist S. Burhards. In the sand, some 500m from the sea, he found some pottery fragments, a sandstone hone, a piece of flint, parts of bones and an amber bead. He handed the findings over to the National Museum of History. In October 1934, the site was checked by archaeologist E. Šturms, who found the archaeological layer, typical for such settlements, in the landslides of the Pilsupe riverbanks. In 1936 he started larger excavations to continue by 1938. Totally seven, chronologically different settlements were detected and many artefacts found, including fragments of the so called Sārnate and pit-comb pottery, as well as some pieces of corded pottery. Based on these findings, the settlement is dated back to the beginning or middle of the 3rd millenary B.C., and it has been inhabited till the beginning of the 2nd millenary B.C. Especially remarkable are three clay figures in human shape which have probably been used for some religious cult purposes.

Since 1993, archaeologist Ilzes Loze has discovered several pit-comb ware culture settlements in large area around Pūrciems village. They are known in research literature as "the Ģipka settlements".
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