Volkaite-Kulikauskienė, R. 1970. Lietuviai IX-XII a [Lithuanians in the Ninth–Twelfth Centuries].

Zabiela, G. 1998a. “Application of Alternative Methods in Lithuanian Field Archaeology (up to 1996).” Archaeologia Baltica (Vilnius) 3: 143–158.

———. 1998b. “Arkheologiya v Litvie v 1991–1996 gg: dostizhenya i problemy” [Archaeology in Lithuania in 1991–1996: Achievements and Problems]. Rosiiskaya arkheologiya [Russian Archaeology] (Moscow) no. 3: 237–244.

Ljubljansko Barje

Ljubljansko Barje, known also as the Ljubljana Marsh or the Laibacher Moor, is a complex of prehistoric pile-dwelling sites in slovenia. The term Ljubljansko Barje is frequently used as a synonym for Copper- and Bronze Age pile dwellings in the marshland south of Ljubljana in a Pleistocene tectonic depression of approximately 170 square kilometers. It is presumed that a shallow lake existed there before the formation of marshes in about 2000 b.c.

The first pile dwellings were discovered by dragotin (karl) dezman, curator of the Provincial Museum of Carniola, Ljubljana, in 1875 near the village of Ig, fifteen kilometers south of Ljubljana. Between 1875 and 1877, he conducted several excavation campaigns in which he researched an area of more than 10,000 square meters. Archaeological excavations revealed very rich, ornamented pottery; clay figurines; stone, wooden, and bone implements; and some of the earliest metal finds in Slovenia. These finds made the Ig pile dwellings one of the most various and attractive prehistoric sites of central Europe at the time. Nevertheless, Dezman succeeded in publishing only brief notices and some interim excavation reports.

Initially, the pile dwellings were attributed to the Stone Age, but later they were thought to be Bronze Age in origin. The first more-detailed cultural attribution of the dwellings was given by M. Hoernes in 1898, who placed the finds from Ig into the context of the Bandkeramik culture. European archaeologist vere gordon childe, in The Danube in Prehistory (1929), associated the Ig pile dwellings with Slavonian culture and placed them in the Copper Age (Danubian IV phase). The Slovenian archaeologist rajko lozar attributed “the Ljubljana pottery” to the northern cultural circle, especially to the Globular Amphora culture of the late Neolithic period.

After World War II, from 1953 to 1981, the Department of Archaeology at the University of Ljubljana (consisting of josip korošec, Tatjana Bregant, and Zorko Harej) organized several larger excavations on newly discovered sites in the Ljubljansko Barje. The results of these excavations demonstrated the existence of a long-lived settlement system extending from the late Neolithic to the early Bronze Age. The first catalog of finds from the Ig dwellings was published by the Slovenian archaeologists Josip Korošec and Paola Korošec in 1969. They classified the pottery from Ig into two cultural and chronological groups originating from the Slavonian (Vucedol) culture complex. The first Ig phase was placed in the early Copper Age, and the second, in the late Copper Age and transition to the Bronze Age.

The most complete chronological and cultural study of pottery from Ljubljansko Barje was published by Hermann Parzinger (Parzinger 1984). He defined seven phases (from the end of the Neolithic to the early Bronze Age) and placed the Ljubljansko Barje pile dwellings in the context of the middle Danubian cultural region (Lengyel, Baden, Vucedol cultures). However, he also demonstrated the presence of cultural elements associated with northern Italian cultures (Lagozza, Remedello, and Polada).

Tatjana Greif

References

Harej, Z. 1986. Kultura kolisc na Ljubljanskem barju. Ljubljana.

Korošec, P., and J. Korošec. 1969. Najdbe s koliscarskih naselbin pri Igu na Ljubljanskem barju. Ljubljana.

Parzinger, Hermann. 1984. “Die Stellung der Uferrandsiedlungen bei Ljubljana im aneolithischen und fruhbronzezeitlichen Kultursystem der mittleren Donaulander.” Arheoloski vestnik 35: 13–75.