Sarunas Milisauskas, of Williamsville, a University at Buffalo archaeology professor whose explorations in Poland uncovered one of the world’s oldest depictions of wheeled transportation, died April 1 in Brothers of Mercy Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Clarence. He was 87.
Born in Kaunas, Lithuania, the son of a business owner, he fled with his parents ahead of advancing Russian troops at the end of World War II and lived in the American sector of occupied Germany before coming to Kenosha, Wis.
He served in the Army before earning a bachelor’s degree from The Ohio State University in 1962 and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After completing his doctorate in archaeology in 1970 at the University of Michigan, he joined the UB faculty.
He was chairman of the Department of Anthropology at UB and served as a museum director. He retired in 2020.
During his first year at UB, he received a grant of $36,220 in Polish zlotys from the U.S. government to study Stone Age inhabitants of Poland. The first grant ever received by UB in a foreign currency, it came from Polish payments for American wheat.
Dr. Milisauskas had begun archaeological research in 1965 at Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements in Central and Eastern Europe.
At his primary site in the prehistoric village of Bronocice, Poland, about 30 miles northeast of Krakow, he and a team from UB and the Polish Academy of Sciences discovered a ceramic vase decorated with a symbols that included a four-wheeled vehicle with axles and a yoke for pulling by an animal.
Of the finding he wrote: “The 1974 field season yielded data beyond our expectations. An incised wagon motif was found on a ... vessel in a pit. An animal bone associated with the pot in the pit was dated by radiocarbon method, around 3400 BCE. The vessel represents one of the earliest pieces of evidence for the presence of wheeled wagons in Europe.”
The vessel, known as the Bronocice pot, is displayed in the Archaeological Museum of Krakow.
Dr. Milisauskas received grants from the Smithsonian Institution, the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies for his studies of the economies, environments and social organization of prehistoric communities.
He published 14 books and more than 100 articles, book chapters, book reviews and commentaries. His book, “European Prehistory: A Survey,” follows the course of human activity in Europe from the Paleolithic Age prior to 10,000 BCE to the Roman Empire.
He was elected to membership in the Polish Academy of Arts and Science earlier this year. At the time of his death, he was working with a co-author on a book about the Bronocice pot.
He met his wife, the former Vita Kriciunaite, who also came from Lithuania, in Chicago. They were married in 1961.
In addition to his wife, a retired microbiologist and researcher at UB, survivors include a daughter, Aida Milisauskas; two brothers, John and Tony; and a sister, Anne Arbas.
Services were private.
Email danderson@buffnews.com.