scholar who, after studying at Padua, was an ecclesiastical diplomat, an architect, a chancellor to the bishop, and the first known researcher of Roman epigraphy in the Austrian lands. He produced a two-volume manuscript on Roman inscriptions from celeia, Poetovio, and other sites from the Inner Austrian Provinces. The records from Prygl’s manuscript were included in Theodor Mommsen’s Corpus Inscriptionum Latinorum (CIL), together with the inscriptions collected by Antiquus Austriacus, supposedly another sixteenth-century antiquary from Carniola and Styria but later identified with as Prygl.

In the seventeenth century, essays on ancient history were frequently included in major geographic and topographical studies. Giacommo Filippo Tommasini, bishop of Novigrad/Cittanova (1595–1654), wrote an updated description of the history and geography of Istria (De commentarii storici-geografici della provincia dell’Istria libri otto con appendice), and he was the first to attempt to reconstruct Istria’s ancient geography on the basis of analyses of written sources, archaeological monuments, place-names, and oral history. In 1689 Janez Vajkard Valvazor (1641–1693), a nobleman from Carniola, a topographer, and a member of the Royal Society in London, published Die Ehre des Herzogthums Crain, a fifteen-volume synthesis with 528 graphics on the geography, topography, history, ethnography, and antiques of Carniola. For almost two centuries this was the most complete and influential work in the field of geography and history in Slovenia. At the same time, during the seventeenth century, two other historians and antiquaries worked in Ljubljana: Janez Ludvik Schönleben (1618– 1681) and Janez Gregor Dolničar (Thalnitscher) (1615–1719). In 1681 Schönleben, a theologist, philosopher, and professor of rhetoric in Linz, Vienna, and Ljubljana, published Carniola antiqua et nova sive annales sacroprophani, a work on the history of Carniola from the prehistoric period to the year 1000. Dolničar, a jurist, historian, and member of many Italian learned societies, was also the author of the first manuscript on the history and antiquities of Ljubljana (Antiquitates Urbis Labacensis) published in Ljubljana in 1693.

In the eighteenth century historical and antiquarian studies were particularly intensive in Istria. Due to the excellent preservation of monuments there, especially in Pula/Pola, many foreign scholars went to Istria to study the Roman architecture and antiquities. Among these scholars were some of the most famous architects and antiquaries of their times, such as Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), the Venetian architect; Indigo Jones (1573–1652), the English architect; Jacob Spon, the antiquarian from Lyon; Gianbattista Piranesi (1720–1778), the Italian graphic artist and painter; Julian David Le Roy (1724–1803), the French architect; and Robert Adam (1728–1792), the English architect to the king. One of the most influential local scholars was Gian Rinaldo Carli (1720–1795), an economist and historian who authored Delle antichità di Capodistria (Venice 1743) and Antichità Italiche (Italian Antiquities, 1788–1791) and conducted the first recorded excavation of the Roman amphitheater in Pula.

The first studies on national history appeared at the end of the eighteenth century, in the context of the “national rebirth” of Slovenes. Anton Tomaž Linhart (1756–1795), a writer and historian, published a study on the history of Carniola and of the southern Slavs in austria, Versuch einer Geschichte von Krain und der übrigen südlich Slaven Österreichs (1788–1791). This work was the first study to define the Slovene nation on the basis of a common history in the medieval period. The chapters in which Linhart presented prehistoric and Roman period geography and historical developments prior to the arrival of the Slavs are particularly important for the history of archaeological thought in Slovenia.

Valentin Vodnik (1758–1819), a priest, poet, grammarian, and historian, applied Linhart’s concept of the Slovene nation in his book Geschichte des Herzogthums Krain, des Gebietes von Triest und der Grafschaft Görz (Vienna 1809). Vodnik was also engaged in archaeological projects: he copied the famous Roman itinerary the Tabula peuntingeriana in Vienna, and he excavated the Early Iron Age (EIA) hill-fort at stična, together with Žiga Zoiss (1747–1819), an industrialist, a member of the Académie Celtique from Paris, and the most influential promoter of