Scordisci

Some of the most exquisite European Iron Age jewelry pieces were produced by the " barbarian " tribes on the Balkan peninsula between the 4 th and 1 st century BC. During this period Celtic craftsmen, working in a variety of mediums, drew heavily on both Scythian and Hellenistic art; a process which culminated in a distinctive Balkan Celtic style. Although multiple mediums were used, the genius of Celtic craftsmen of this period is to be most clearly observed in silver treasures produced by the Scordisci tribes, such as those from Hrtkovci, Židovar, Čurug etc.

The City Museum Sisak has obtained a hoard of imitations of the drachms of Apollonia and Dyrrhachium allegedly found in the nearby Odra Sisačka in the early 1980s. The coins are most likely subaerati, poorly executed with no legends on the reverses (save for the abbreviated city name DYP) and two legends on the obverses (one nonsensical). Curiously, their die axes are aligned and oriented to 12h, and they were produced by four different die combinations. The distribution of both the original coins of Apollonia and Dyrrhachium and their imitations suggests that this hoard was almost certainly produced, and most likely also deposited, in the areas further to the east. The hoard is only the second example of a collective find consisting exclusively of imitations of the drachms of Apollonia and Dyrrhachium (alongside the Romanian Troianul hoard), and the metrological analysis and comparative study alongside other similar hoards from Romania and Hungary has provided the means of dating the hoard in the early second half of the 1 st c. BC.

The paper reviews the conventional notion of the straightforward relation between
the presence of warrior equipment, its quantity and quality, and the warrior status of the deceased
in the area of middle Danube by revising the evidence from Karaburma necropolis. It
is argued that the concept of the warlike late Iron Age Scordisci is derived from ancient written
accounts and that the role of war and violent character of communities in the middle Danube
region are overemphasized and uncritically taken as an axiom. The paper suggests other
possible paths of interpretation which point to the diversification of social roles, possible
professionalization within the late Iron Age social structure, as well as (probably) diverse
meanings and utilization of weaponry in the funerary context.

Two of the five complexes with grave goods found contained incinerated bones, most probably human, while some of the graves contained also wood charcoal.
The archaeologists recovered a rich and varied inventory that consists, almost in its entirety, of weaponry and fighting gear: three daggers of the sica type and an iron sica scabbard, three swords and one sword scabbard, three lance heads and one shaft, three shield umbos and one bit. One may notice that there are three items of sica daggers, lances and shields. All pieces had strong traces of burning and deterioration
(bending or fragmenting), which points out an obvious ritualistic intention. The clothing accessories are scarce: two iron bracelets in a complex, a bronze plate item in another, and a bronze fibula found near a
complex.
We could state that the recovered inventory is specific to warriors, one of them being a rider. It is worth mentioning that only a small part of the complexes of the area has been surveyed. The ensemble of rituals and inventory leads us to the conclusion that the dead were, most probably, Dacian warriors.

The paper considers cultural and imaginative construction of the Ister/
Danube, and its implications in the creation of the limes area of the provinces of
Moesia and (part of) Pannonia. It discusses how the Danube was used as an element
in construing the Scordisci as a Roman enemy and (pseudo)ethnic tribe, what was the
meaning of this connection, and did such conceptualization have real repercussions
in the area of waterscape associated with the ‘tribe’. It is proposed that the Danube
emerged as a hydrographical frontier thanks to its specific longue durée symbolic
meaning of liminality embedded in the imperialistic agency in the course of creating
provincial/frontier/imperial space. The basic point is that the ancient imagological
tradition had an important effect on the construction of Roman imperial space thanks to
the intellectual and political elites’ capacities to shape powerscapes by projecting their
own conceptualizations of the world into the webs of relations under their influence.

Until 1981, the Late Iron Age in the Croatian-Serbian Danube region was organized using the relative chronology of Jovan Todorović from Belgrade. His division consisted of phases I (pre-Celtic period), II, III, IV, and V (Roman period) – Kelti u jugoistočnoj Evropi 1968, 117 ss; Praistorijska Karaburma 1, 1972, 83 ss; Skordisci 1974, 112 ss). He further divided Phase III into subphases IIIa and IIIb. On the chronological table of graves from the cemetery of Karaburma in Belgrade he assigned many graves to wrong phases. In the section with phase II graves, which should correspond to LT B2 in Central Europe, for example only two female graves appear (63 and 67). He assigned contemporary sword graves to the later IIIa (grave 22) and IIIb (graves 66, 71 and 111) phases. Two graves from the LT D1 phase, grave 14 with a Laminci type belt plate and grave 15 with a belt plate of the same type and a Karaburma 39 type fibula, were on the contrary ascribed to phase IIIa instead of to phase IV.
In my diploma thesis, written under the supervision of prof. Stane Gabrovec, submitted in 1980 to the Department of Archaeology of the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, and published in a somewhat abridged form in 1981 in the archaeological journals Arheološki vestnik (Ljubljana) and Starinar (Belgrade), I proposed a new relative chronology for the Late Iron Age in the Croatian-Serbian Danube region. It was mostly based on graves from the cemeteries of Karaburma and Rospi Ćuprija in Belgrade, but also on other published La Tène graves from this region. My chronology consisted of phases Beograd 1 (LT B2), Beograd 2 (LT C), and Beograd 3 (LT D). In two chapters published in volume 5 of Praistorija jugoslavenskih zemalja (Sarajevo 1987) and in my book Late La Tène-Roman cemetery in Novo mesto (Ljubljana 2008), I have finally improved this relative chronology, which now consists of phases Beograd 1 (LT B2), 2a (LT C1), 2b (LT C2), 3a (LT D1), and 3b (LT D2). 
Phase Beograd 1 includes the graves I cited in 1981 and the mostly still unpublished cemetery of Pećine near Kostolac (B. Jovanović in: Etudes Celtiques 21, 1984; Scordisci and the native population 1992; Balcanica 35, 2004; Scripta praehistorica in honorem Biba Teržan 2007; Balcanica 45, 2014), as well as the female grave from Surduk at Feudvar (Kull 1991). In Phase Beograd 2a are all the graves assigned by me in 1981, as well as a warrior grave from Čubarsko brdo in the Iron Gate region (Popović 1989–1990). Phase Beograd 2b includes the chariot grave from Odžaci, the unusual grave with a horse skeleton and weapons from Pećine near Kostolac (B. Jovanović, Etudes Celtiques 21, 1984), and several single finds (swords, bronze chain belts, fibulae with enamel decoration), e.g. from Kupinovo, Hrtkovci and Boljevci in Srem. In phase Beograd 3a are all of the graves assigned by me in 1981 to phase Beograd 3, as well as the graves from Mala Vrbica – Ajmana (Đerdapske sveske 3) and from Vajuga – Pesak (Popović 1989–1990) in the Iron Gate region, the warrior grave from Mali Bilač in Požeška kotlina (Dizdar, Potrebica 2014), the hoards of silver jewellery from Kovin (Rašajski 1961) and Židovar (Jevtić, Lazić, Sladić 2006), the hoard of weapons and horse gear from Veliki Vetren (Stojić 2003), and the sanctuary at Vojarna in Osijek. From phase Beograd 3b we only know of finds from settlements (e. g. fibulae of the Jezerine, Gorica, Alesia and Almgren 18 types) and not a single grave.

Skordisti~ke ratni~ke sahrane sa kremacijom U ovom radu je analizirana grupa od sto skordisti~kih ratni~kih grobova (uklju-~uju}i i razorene grobove, kao i nalaze ~iji kontekst nije u potpunosti poznat). Lokaliteti na kojima su se nalazili grobovi pripadaju grupi nekropola i pojedina-~nih grobova i datuju se u period od IV veka p. n. e. do I veka n. e. Ciljistrài-vanja bio je analiza grobnog ritusa i, posebno, pojave namerno o{te}ivanogorùja koja je konstantovana u ve}ini grobova sa kremacijom. Prisustvo i uloga o{te-}enogorùja u grobovima sagledani su kroz prizmu pretpostavke da su telo ra-tnika i njegovoorùje u poistove}ivani grobnom ritusu. Shodno tome razmotreni su mogu}i sociolo{ki, istorijski i kulturolo{ki efekti na grobni ritus. Uvod Skordisci sùiveli na teritoriji Podunavlja i Posavine u III veku pre nove ere, a kasnije na teritoriji koja se prostirala od isto~ne Slavonije na zapadu do doline Timoka na istoku, uklju~uju}i podru~ja Vojvodine i Po-moravlja (slika 1) (Jovanovi} 1984: 41). U istorijskim izvorima Skordisci su ~esto predstavljani kao " ratni~ko pleme " ili " horde i gomile lutaju}ih ratnika " (Papazoglu 2007: 209; Jovanovi} 1984: 41). Strabon Skordiske spominje kao me{avinu Kelta i ilirskih, tra~kih i da~kih elemenata (Todo-rovi} 1968: 12). Pitanje skordisti~kih ratni~kih grobova je i ranije razmatrano (Erce-govi}, 1961; Jacanovi} 1988; Sladi} 1988; Todorovi} 1973-1974). Za razliku od ranijih radova, ~iji je pristup, u najve}oj meri, bio deskriptivan, u ovom radu su na~in sahranjivanja i grobni prilozi (posebno o{te}eno orùje) interpretirani kao mogu}i ~inioci u formiranju statusa i identiteta skordisti~kih ratnika. Dakle, cilj rada bio je, ne samo analiza na~ina sahra-njivanja i grobnih priloga u skordisti~kim ratni~kim grobovima sa krema-cijom, ve} i interpretacija tih nalaza u odnosu na kategorije statusa i identiteta.

In this paper enamel inlayed Celtic brooches from the Middle Tisza Region will be presented and contextualised. Thanks to the intensive metal detecting surveys conducted in recent years, a number of new
finds found their way to the museum collections. Until now there are 12 of this type broches are known.10 are recently discovered and the other two were found at Törökszenmtiklós – Surjány site those are wellrecognized among archaeologists. The amount of new data makes necessary to publish and reconsider the fresh finds and thoughts. In this paper these brooches are presented and analysed. In the light of different finds just as coins, Laminci-type belt buckle we can assume a stronger and more intensive connection between the Middle Tisza Region and the Northern Balkan during the II-I. c. BC.