Stašo Forenbaher i Timothy Kaiser:
Spila Nakovana - Ilirsko svetište na Pelješcu

Knjiga govori o otkricu i istraživanju ilirskog svetišta iz vremena helenizma, te donosi prve interpretacije tog nesvakidašnjeg arheološkog nalazišta. Svetište u Spili kod Nakovane otkriveno je slucajno, prilikom rutinskih arheoloških istraživanja, u ljetu 1999. godine. Zbog sigurnosti tog rijetkog i iznimno dobro ocuvanog nalazišta, otkrice je držano u tajnosti sve do iduce jeseni. U meduvremenu su provedena opsežna arheološka istraživanja koja su dala neobicno vrijedne i efektne rezultate.
Osim nekoliko vrlo kratkih prethodnih izvještaja u strucnoj literaturi, ova je knjiga prvi cjeloviti prikaz tijeka i rezultata istraživanja, i to u obliku pristupacnom širokom citateljstvu. Knjiga je namijenjena svima onima koje zanima drevna prošlost Jadrana. Ilirsko svetište u Spili cini njenu okosnicu, no pricu o svetištu proširena je na niz opcenitih tema vezanih uz vrijeme kada je svetište bilo u funkciji, kao i uz prirodu i svakodnevicu samih arheoloških istraživanja. Tako cilj knjige nije samo predstaviti javnosti jedno zanimljivo arheološko otkrice, vec i iskoristiti tu priliku da se na pristupacan nacin docara što je zapravo arheologija i približi davno vrijeme kojem je svetište pripadalo.

Discovery and exploration of an Illyrian sanctuary on the Peljesac peninsula

by Staso Forenbaher and Timothy Kaiser

Nakovana Cave: An Illyrian Ritual Site!!!

Peljesac folk tale

And there is a place in Nakovana where treasure is buried.

And they say that this treasure will be discovered if John and Mary go together, and when the rooster crows at the eleventh hour, they should gather what is before them, and that will be the treasure.

And they arranged for it once, and they went, but they fell asleep, so that they heard neither the eleventh hour nor the rooster.

Central Dalmatia



The location of Nakovana Cave on Dalmatia's Peljesac peninsula, showing nearby Illyrian sites, Greek colonies, and ancient sea-lanes.

Preface

Ever wonder what archaeologists do?

 

When most people think about archaeologists, the image that most often comes to mind is that of a heroic or eccentric explorer chancing upon the spectacular remains of a distant past.

"What do you see?" asked the companion. And from within King Tutankhamen's dark tomb came the archaeologist's reply, "Wonderful things."

People sometimes think that exciting discoveries about the past, treasures of one kind or another, lie around every corner just waiting to be unearthed by some archaeologist. Among children, "archaeologist" is a popular answer to the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" You'd think that the profession would be jam-packed with enthusiasts.

As it turns out, though, few people ever do become archaeologists. Perhaps that's because it is not a lucrative occupation, or maybe it is because the reality of archaeology is quite different from the stereotype. Most of the work in our profession is not terribly exciting. The romantic image of the archaeologist, who works in some exotic locale under the benevolent sponsorship of a powerful institution or a rich patron, discovering lost civilizations and the like, belongs to the past.

These days, the struggle for funds and administrative work take up as much time as research. Archaeological digs are often found on urban building sites and highway rights-of-way, conducted under the pressure of deadlines and in the shadow of construction machinery.

Fieldwork is followed by finds processing and artifact analysis, tasks that involve endlessly repetitive routine procedures and thousands of hours of sitting in front of a computer. Years often pass before one is able to say something definitive about what one has actually excavated, and the results, not spectacular enough to arouse public attention, will interest only other archaeologists.

However, once in a while someone does get lucky and makes a discovery that resembles a romantic adventure story. In the summer of 1999, when we began our exploration of Nakovana Cave, we had no inkling that only a few meters away lay a hidden chamber of the cave, sealed long ago. Sequestered in this chamber were rich traces of mysterious rituals, which took place there over two thousand years ago.

In this book we relate how, through a combination of our natural curiosity, a professional hunch, and, above all, good luck, we discovered and explored an excellently preserved Illyrian sanctuary from the Hellenistic period, ca. 4th-1st c. BC.

We offer our first interpretations of this extraordinarily rare and valuable site based on analyses of the archaeological evidence we recovered from the cave. Our exploration of the cave sanctuary is now finished for the moment, but analyses of finds continue, and investigations of other archaeological monuments on the Nakovana plateau have only just begun. We are certain that they will yield new information that will augment, and sometimes modify, the answers to the questions that we discuss here.

One thing is certain, however -- Nakovana Cave is a small gem of cultural heritage. It provides us with a unique window into the spiritual world of the Illyrians at a time immediately before this ancient culture was finally incorporated into the Mediterranean world of classical antiquity.

The discovery

It's a hot summer afternoon and our small field crew is going about its routine work, looking for traces of the past. We are digging with small tools, slowly, carefully removing thin layers of dirt from the bottom of a square hole that is almost 3 meters deep; it's what archaeologists call a "test trench."

Only the occasional muffled word, the metallic ring of a trowel scraping against a rock and the rhythmic rattle of our sieves being shaken, disturb the thunderous chirping of the crickets. Luckily, the test trench is located just inside the entrance of a cave, so we are always in the shade, while outside the sun mercilessly bakes the maquis and the rocks. Our cave, known simply as "Spila" ("Cave") is hidden near the top of a rocky ridge that extends from the massive summit of Mt. St. Elias towards the westernmost tip of the Peljesac peninsula.

That day the six of us have unexpected helpers. Tamara and Marko, two school kids from the nearby village of Loviste have joined us out of curiosity. For weeks they've been clamoring to see what we are doing up there in that cave. We'd like them to think that what we're up to is interesting and useful, not just a waste of time and money. That's what most of the villagers must think when they see us returning from the hills each day -- hot, dirty and apparently empty-handed. But our team is really in sync and there is not much that we can give our young helpers to do.

The cave that we are working in is, in fact, a spacious, low rock shelter. It consists of a single hall that is some fifteen meters wide at the opening and about as deep. People used to keep goats here, so they barred the entrance with a dry stone wall, only bits of which are still standing. The ceiling near the entrance is just high enough for a person to stand upright. It gets progressively lower towards the back, until it meets the cave floor, which is covered with large rocks.

We keep telling each other that sometime before the end of the season we should see if there are any interesting archaeological finds hidden in the floor rubble at the back of the cave. Ancient visitors sometimes lost or left their possessions among the rocks near cave walls. With the passage of time, pieces of broken pots and discarded tools would slip between the cracks and stay there, protected from trampling and hidden from souvenir hunters. To an archaeologist, such ancient trash is a precious source of information.

While the rest of us keep digging, Lara decides to keep the teenagers busy by having them remove some of the stones at the back of the rock shelter. We cannot see what they are doing from where we are, nearly 3 meters down at the bottom of the trench. We can only hear dull thumps, the clacking of stone against stone, and snippets of conversation:

"Another potsherd... Bone... No, it's not human; probably it was a sheep or a goat... Nothing much..."

The afternoon is slowly slipping away just like any other afternoon in the field, until we hear Lara's voice call out, "Staso, come and look."

Staso doesn't feel like climbing out of the trench unless it's for a very good reason, so he asks, "What's up?"

"I can't really see," says Lara, "it's dark."

Nakovana Cave: An Illyrian Ritual Site!!!

If you've ever gone spelunking, you'll know that the heart of a cave explorer beats faster at the mention of darkness beyond. Staso was a caver before he was ever an archaeologist so he scrambles out of the trench and sees Lara, or, more precisely, he sees her legs sticking out of a cleft between the stones and the ceiling.

"So, what does it look like?" he asks.

"It's dark and I can't see a thing. It looks like the rock face is right here, but then maybe it isn't, maybe one could crawl deeper inside."

"Are you going to take a look?" Staso asks, secretly hoping that the answer will be no. Sure enough:

"No, you better go yourself if you wish."

Staso takes his headlamp and crawls into the crack Lara has found. His flashlight illuminates a cleft at least two meters wide and no more than 30 centimeters high. Many stalactites drip from its ceiling and stalagmites grow from the ground; they frame a space that looks like the jaws of a shark. The ground slopes off into the darkness.Avoiding the sharp, brittle stalactites, Staso wriggles downward on his belly.

He does not need to mimic a snake for long. After a few meters, the ceiling begins to rise, and he can crawl. A little farther and he can stand up.

A cave chamber, some fifteen meters long, opens in front of him. The simple harmony of its natural architecture catches Staso by surprise. The ceiling consists of a tilted monolithic limestone slab. One end of the slab rests on a vertical wall three meters high, completely covered in stalagmitic crust, while the other end reaches to the ground.

The chamber gets narrower towards the back, and at the far end stands a single, large stalagmite. A spacious corridor continues behind it, disappearing into the darkness, into the bowels of the mountain. Stalagmitic formations are clean and intact. The clayey ground is covered with a thin carbonate crust that crackles with his every step.

Clearly, nobody has been here in a very, very long while.

To discover a new cave channel would in and of itself make any spelunker happy. But, as Staso sorts out his first impressions, he notices something else that makes him exclaim loudly with joy, alone in the dark though he is.

The ground is strewn with many pieces of broken pottery. And not just any pottery! These are not tiny sherds of coarse, handmade prehistoric pots, a common find in many caves around here, but rather they are large pieces of fine, thin-walled, elegantly shaped vessels, decorated with black, red and white paint.

Their style is readily identifiable to any archaeology student: only the ancient Greeks made such pottery in this corner of the world. A new surprise waits at every step: parts of a jug, a miniature amphora half-embedded in stalagmitic crust, several almost complete stemmed cups left in out-of-the-way corners of the chamber. It slowly dawns on Staso that this is really something quite special, and his initial loud cheerfulness gives way to an awed silence.