Indigene zajednice zapadnog i središnjeg Balkanskog poluotoka i 21. stoljeće: metodološki problemi
Indigenous communities of the western and central Balkan Peninsula and the 21st century: methodological problem

Summary/Abstract: This paper discusses current perceptions and methodologies of research into the identity of pre- Roman Iron Age indigenous communities from the western and central Balkan peninsula, still popularly known as “Illyrians”. The debate about the identity of these communities in the 1990s and 2000s was usually limited to restating the current views and methodological approaches. More serious discussion about the existing theoretical approaches was avoided in both, local and international, scholarship. The introduction of contemporary scholarly views, rooted in postmodern and post-structuralist discourse, to the identity- debate is very scarce and inadequate, resulting in a slowly widening divide between local archaeological research and theoretical interpretation in international scholarship. Current methodological approach is based on three main aspects: the analysis of Iron Age material culture, paleolinguistical research, mainly based on indigenous anthroponymy (onomastics), and the testimony of ancient written sources. In addition, it is worth noting that protohistorical periods have been usually anachronically connected by researchers with the Roman provincial archaeology of Dalmatia and Pannonia into a single narrative. Special importance is given to the taxonomisation of the indigenous population, defining the ethnic groups (peoples, tribes) and placing them in space. In this view, ethnic groups are formed in a never-sufficiently-explained process of ethnogenesis (nothing to do with Wenskus-Wolfram- Pohl ethnogenesis model of Viennese school!), from amorphous, culturally akin communities into “more coherent” ethnic units. Finally, strong presence of resistance-narrative in current research overemphasizes indigenous opposition towards mediterranean world (political and cultural) and overlooks their interaction, thus constructing the perception of indigenous “conservativeness”. The paper concludes that current methodological framework is inadequate, as it is still firmly rooted within a culture-history paradigm, which does not sufficiently take into account the fluidity and contextual nature of group identities, or the impact of power- structures within the society. Such an approach ethnicizes the past, anachronically projecting the contemporary significance of ethnic identity on the world of late Iron Age communities, where ethnicity was only one imortant identity-narrative, side by side with regional, social, or political identities. The paper concludes that further debate is necessary and unavoidable, in order to integrate research on those communities into more general current scholarly debates about Iron Age communities in temperate Europe.

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