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with various impressed symbols or feet, as signs bringing good luck or preventing bad omen, allegedly
had been encountered already in the Ancient Rome (German Glücksziegel – Bender 1995, 117. Ansorge
2005, 310). It is possible that some Livonian mason, following the customer’s order, did lay a particular
brick with footprints / paw prints in a definite place of the building, as a magical sign. However, until
now in Latvia no brick with such impressions has been found in a special place, e.g. in a door threshold
of some medieval building. Therefore, there is no basis to consider that the footprints or paw prints were
impressed specially and bear a possible symbolic meaning.
Currently European researchers of building ceramics mostly consider that footprints / paw prints
were created accidentally when domestic animals that were freely chasing around stepped onto yet wet
raw bricks that were placed for drying (Rümelin 1998, 35). Evidences of bricks damaged by domestic
animals freely scurrying about, when they stepped on bricks, are the abovementioned regulations of
brick-kilns in Latvia and Germany in the 17th and 18th centuries. Judging by the finds in Riga excavations
archaeologist Andris Caune has stated that the accidental origin of footprints/paw prints is indicated by
cases when there are two impressions, one on top of the other – these were created owing to the fact that
animals use to put the back foot into the footprint of the forefoot (Caune 1984, 121, 122).
In long-term archaeological investigations of Turaida Castle ruins some bricks with footprints /
paw prints have been found from time to time (Fig. 9). The season of year 1979 was particularly rich –
in the excavations of the Southern Block a hundred-and-a-half bricks with footprints / paw prints left
by various animals were found. The excavation leader explained the animal footprints / paw prints as
being intentionally impressed distinctive marks of brick makers (Graudonis 2003, 143). However, such
a supposition is contradicted by the visual appearance of the finds. If the animal footprints / paw prints
had been intentionally impressed, then there would be a single foot on each article, which would be
deepened not more than by 1 cm, and the impression would be located on a well visible place – in the
middle of the wider surface, and it would not deform the brick’s edge. When the bricks with footprints /
paw prints obtained in Turaida in summer 1979 are viewed the conclusions seem to be entirely different.
In that year, in total 153 bricks with various animals’ footprints / paw prints were gathered (J. Graudonis.
Unpublished report on excavations in Turaida Castle in 1979, pp. 93–116). Of these the most part –
138 items – were found when digging up the ruins of the Southern Block. On the northern side of the
1st floor, under the debris, large-size Gothic bricks were uncovered that stood on their narrowest end
beside each other. In-between them there was sand and decomposed mortar, therefore archaeologist
J. Graudonis considered that the vault surmounting the premises had collapsed (J. Graudonis. Unpublished
report on excavations in Turaida Castle in 1979, p. 19). The castle’s architect-restorer G. Jansons, on the
contrary, rejected such a possibility and offered an explanation that the set of brick had been intentionally
carefully stacked to make a more stable foundation for the bank made later when the wall had already
collapsed (Jansons 2007, 65, 670). It is unlikely that any feasible explanation of the reasons for the stack
of bricks will be ever reached, since the conditions of the find have not been registered in detail and the
layers have not been separated.
If a stack of bricks was uncovered during the excavations of the Southern Block, it could be a stock of
once-used building materials. Since in the Middle Ages building ceramic articles were very expensive, they
were often recycled. Even if the vault had collapsed, the bricks already had once been in use. Evidence of
Ieva Ose. Building ceramics of Turaida Castle in the 13th–17th centuries