Antiquarian Researches In Illyricum 3 4

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

Illyria is the name given to the ancient region of the Balkans on the Adriatic coast from which most historians of the Balkans believe modern Albanians descend. This illuminating work by the celebrated archaeologist, Arthur Evans, examines the lives of the ancient Illyrians and contains many penetrating insights into the region. Drawing on his extensive travels in the area in the 1880s, Ancient Illyria presents for the first time Evans' original analysis of the diverse archaeological sites of the region to construct a full and fascinating history. Never before published as a single volume, this classic work is still the best account and contains the most detailed research into the subject. Fully illustrated and including pictures of some Roman inscriptions which were later destroyed during the Serbian occupation of Kosovo, this invaluable guide to the archaeology and history of ancient Illyria is an essential text for all historians and everyone interested in the Balkans.

Silver mining was a capitalist business long before the supposed origin of modern capitalism Hundreds of years before a sixteenth†‘century crisis in European agriculture led to the origins of capital, investment, and finance, the silver mining industry exhibited many of the features of modern capitalism. Silver mines were large†‘scale businesses that demanded large investments and steady cash flow, achieved by spreading that risk through fungible shares and creating legal structures to protect entrepreneurs from financial disaster. Jeannette Graulau argues that mining preceded agriculture as the first true capitalist enterprise of the modern world.

This book explores social transformations which led to the establishment of medieval Hum (future Herzegovina) and Bosnia in the period from ca. 450 to 1200 AD using the available written and material sources. It follows social and political developments in these historical regions from the last centuries of Late Antiquity, through the social collapse of the seventh and eighth centuries, and into their new medieval beginnings in the ninth century. Fragmentary and problematic sources from this period were, in the past, often used to justify modern political claims to these contested territories and incorporate them into the ‘national biographies’ of the Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), or to support the ‘Yugoslavizing’ and other ideological discourses. The book goes beyond ideological and national mythologemes of the past in order to provide a new historical narrative that brings more light to this region placed on the frontiers of both the medieval West and the Byzantine empire. It provides new views of the period between ca. 450 and 1200 for the parts of Western Balkans and Eastern Adriatic, brings the most recent local historical and archaeological research to the Anglophone readership and contributes to the scholarship of the late antique and early medieval Mediterranean study of this very poorly known area. The book is intended for academic audiences interested in history and archaeology of the Late Antiquity and early Middle Ages, but also to all those interested in the general history of Herzegovina, Bosnia, Dalmatia and the Balkans.