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Prehistoric and Antique Perioda in the Area of the Settlement of Sućuraj
Nikša Vujnović
Abstract
After some twenty years of archaeological research in the area in question - the easternmost part of the island of Hvar in Croatia - the author of this paper has registered 47 sites, five times more than it was known in 1978, the year he started collecting informations for an archaeological map of his native place. Although no site fom the Neolithic has been registered
here, the immediate vicinity of such sites only some 2-3 km to the West in the caves of Mala spila and that of Živa voda, where fragments of impresso pottery (older Neolithic) and those of the Hvar Culture pottery (newer Neolithic) have been found, makes it probable that humans of that age had settled this area as•well.
According to the locally collected archaeological material it is evident that people appeared here already at the beginning of the early Bronze Age, in the migrations of newcomers of Indoeuropean origin. They herded livestock and, in search of new pastures, at Sućuraj as the nearest point from the mainland made their way to this island, where they continued their nomadic lifestyle. Evidence for the period ranging from the late Bronze Age through development of cultures of the Iron Age is very scant. A few of pottery fragments suggests that life has had its continuity even here, and it is most likely that in those times here existed a community very much similar to those on the nearby mainland and on the surrounding islands. The material hitherto published also suggests that the domicile population continued their traditional way of life even during the Roman times, when they most probably lived at the local villae rusticae, always near the best tillable lands, like their forefathers. The author is of an opinion that all the problems and open questions regarding the position of this area of the island of Hvar in relation to the vicinal regions in prehistoric, protohistoric and historic times will be solved and answered only after systematic archaeological researches of settlements, caves and hillforts, and after elaboration of the vast existing archaeological material collected in the last twenty years approximately.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
123695
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2002.
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