Books by Danijel Džino
Early medieval Hum and Bosnia ca. 450-1200: Beyond myths , 2023
This book explores social transformations which led to the establishment of medieval Hum (future ... more 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. 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 a 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 with study of very poorly known area.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 Setting the stage
2 (A long overdue) essay on historiography and archaeology of late antique and early medieval Hum and Bosnia
3 The Prelude: Making of imperial society
4 ‘Long’ Sixth century (ca. 450-630)
5 The Dark Age Interlude (ca. 630-800)
6 "The Force Awakens": The Ninth Century
7 The Lords of Hum
8 "Good ol’ days of ban Kulin": The birth of Bosnia
https://www.routledge.com/Early-Medieval-Hum-and-Bosnia-ca-450-1200-Beyond-Myths/Dzino/p/book/9781032047928
Liburnians and Illyrian Lembs: Iron Age Ships of the Eastern Adriatic explores the origins of two... more Liburnians and Illyrian Lembs: Iron Age Ships of the Eastern Adriatic explores the origins of two types of ancient ship which appear in the written sources connected with the protohistoric eastern Adriatic area: the ‘Liburnian’ (liburna or liburnica) and the southern Adriatic (Illyrian) ‘lemb’. The relative abundance of written sources suggests that both ships played significant roles in ancient times, especially the Liburnian, which became the main type of light warship in early Roman imperial fleets and ultimately evolved into a generic name for warships in the Roman Imperial period and Late Antiquity. The book provides an extensive overview of written, iconographic and archaeological evidence on eastern Adriatic shipbuilding traditions before the Roman conquest in the late first century BC / early first century AD, questioning the existing scholarly assumption that the liburna and lemb were closely related, or even that they represent two sub-types of the same ship. The analysis shows that identification of the Liburnian liburna and Illyrian lemb as more or less the same ship originates from the stereotypical and essentially wrong assumption in older scholarship that the prehistoric indigenous population of the eastern Adriatic shared the same culture and, roughly, the same identities. The main point made in the book is that two different terms, liburna and lemb, were used in the sources depicting these as two different kinds of ship, rather than being interchangeable terms depicting the same ship type.
Late antique identities from the Western Balkans were transformed into new, Slavic identities aft... more Late antique identities from the Western Balkans were transformed into new, Slavic identities after c. 600 AD. It was a process that is still having continuous impact on the discursive constructions of ethnic and regional identities in the area. Building on the new ways of reading and studying available sources from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the book explores the appearance of the Croats in early medieval Dalmatia (the southern parts of modern-day Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina). The appearance of the early medieval Croat identity is seen as a part of the wider process of identity-transformations in post-Roman Europe, the ultimate result of the identity-negotiation between the descendants of the late antique population and the immigrant groups.
Illyricum, in the western Balkan peninsula, was a strategically important area of the Roman Empir... more Illyricum, in the western Balkan peninsula, was a strategically important area of the Roman Empire where the process of Roman imperialism began early and lasted for several centuries. Dzino here examines Roman political conduct in Illyricum; the development of Illyricum in Roman political discourse; and the beginning of the process that would integrate Illyricum into the Roman Empire and wider networks of the Mediterranean world. In addition, he also explores the different narrative histories, from the Romanocentric narrative of power and Roman military conquest, which dominate the available sources, to other, earlier scholarly interpretations of events.
Edited books by Danijel Džino
ECEE collection Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carol... more ECEE collection Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carolingian Empire off ers insights into the Carolingian southeastern frontier-zone from historical, art-historical and archaeological perspectives. Chapters in this volume discuss the significance of the early medieval period for scholarly and public discourses in the Western Balkans and Central Europe, and the transfer of knowledge between local scholarship and macro-narratives of Mediterranean and Western history. Other essays explore the ways local communities around the Adriatic (Istria, Dalmatia, Dalmatian hinterland, southern Pannonia) established and maintained social networks and integrated foreign cultural templates into their existing cultural habitus.
This book is a collection of papers which are the result of a conference on Power and Emotions in... more This book is a collection of papers which are the result of a conference on Power and Emotions in Antiquity, which was held at the University of Adelaide in December 2008, on the occasion of the retirement of Dr. Ron Newbold. The main aim of this collection is to explore the issues of power and emotions and their relationships with the ancient world, using written sources such as personal letters, speeches, philosophical or historical writings. The book explores different aspects in which power and emotions co-existed in the Roman Imperial and Late Antique world, in the time span stretching from the High Empire of Marcus Aurelius to the post-Roman world of Gregory of Tours and the Frankish kings.
The papers in this book explore topics such as: self-addressing in the works of the emperor Marcus Aurelius; the struggle for control in the writings of St. Jerome; the consequences of the riot of the statues in 4th century Antioch; the place of rage as a virtue in the literature of the fourth century; insult and rage in the work of the historian Ammianus Marcellinus; love and grief in the letters of the Austrasian Frankish queen Brunhild; and the more global problems of power relations and identity transformations occurring in the world of late antiquity.
Book chapters by Danijel Džino
M. Ančić, J. Shepard and T. Vedriš (eds) Imperial Spheres and the Adriatic Byzantium, the Carolingians and the Treaty of Aachen (812), 2018
This paper analyses the available evidence for habitation of the ancient Dalmatian capital Salona... more This paper analyses the available evidence for habitation of the ancient Dalmatian capital Salona during the seventh and eighth centuries. The existing scholarship, with few exceptions, accepts that Salona was taken by the Slavs and Avars before mid-seventh century, probably within the decades of 620s or 630s. However, the lack of archaeological evidence proving the destruction of the city creates space for arguments that the city did not meet a violent end, but rather that it slowly died out, as argued in the works of Rapanić, Goldstein, Budak and the present author. The paper argues that Salona did not meet a violent end in seventh century, but that some kind of habitation existed until eighth century. One plausible possibility could be that some traumatic event happened in eighth century, ending continuity of life within the city-walls.
M. A. Janković & V. D. Mihajlović (eds.), The Reflections on Roman Imperialism, 370-377, 2018
I. Drnić (ed.), Od ruba Imperija do provincijskog središta / Segestica and Siscia. From the periphery of the Empire to a provincial center (Zagreb: Archaeological Museum in Zagreb, 2018), , 2018
in D. Dzino, A. Milošević & Trpimir Vedriš (eds.), Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carolingian Empire. East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (450-1450) 50 (Brill Academic publishers: Leiden & Boston), pp. 17-31., 2018
D. Dzino, A. Milošević, T. Vedriš (eds.), Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carolingian Empire (Brill Academic Publishers: Leiden & Boston), pp. 1-14, 2018
M. Milićević Bradač & D. Demicheli (eds.) The Century of the Brave/Stoljeće hrabrih (FF Press: Zagreb), pp. 77-87, 2018
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Books by Danijel Džino
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 a 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 with study of very poorly known area.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 Setting the stage
2 (A long overdue) essay on historiography and archaeology of late antique and early medieval Hum and Bosnia
3 The Prelude: Making of imperial society
4 ‘Long’ Sixth century (ca. 450-630)
5 The Dark Age Interlude (ca. 630-800)
6 "The Force Awakens": The Ninth Century
7 The Lords of Hum
8 "Good ol’ days of ban Kulin": The birth of Bosnia
https://www.routledge.com/Early-Medieval-Hum-and-Bosnia-ca-450-1200-Beyond-Myths/Dzino/p/book/9781032047928
https://www.routledge.com/From-Justinian-to-Branimir-The-Making-of-the-Middle-Ages-in-Dalmatia/Dzino/p/book/9780367280048
Edited books by Danijel Džino
The papers in this book explore topics such as: self-addressing in the works of the emperor Marcus Aurelius; the struggle for control in the writings of St. Jerome; the consequences of the riot of the statues in 4th century Antioch; the place of rage as a virtue in the literature of the fourth century; insult and rage in the work of the historian Ammianus Marcellinus; love and grief in the letters of the Austrasian Frankish queen Brunhild; and the more global problems of power relations and identity transformations occurring in the world of late antiquity.
Book chapters by Danijel Džino
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 a 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 with study of very poorly known area.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 Setting the stage
2 (A long overdue) essay on historiography and archaeology of late antique and early medieval Hum and Bosnia
3 The Prelude: Making of imperial society
4 ‘Long’ Sixth century (ca. 450-630)
5 The Dark Age Interlude (ca. 630-800)
6 "The Force Awakens": The Ninth Century
7 The Lords of Hum
8 "Good ol’ days of ban Kulin": The birth of Bosnia
https://www.routledge.com/Early-Medieval-Hum-and-Bosnia-ca-450-1200-Beyond-Myths/Dzino/p/book/9781032047928
https://www.routledge.com/From-Justinian-to-Branimir-The-Making-of-the-Middle-Ages-in-Dalmatia/Dzino/p/book/9780367280048
The papers in this book explore topics such as: self-addressing in the works of the emperor Marcus Aurelius; the struggle for control in the writings of St. Jerome; the consequences of the riot of the statues in 4th century Antioch; the place of rage as a virtue in the literature of the fourth century; insult and rage in the work of the historian Ammianus Marcellinus; love and grief in the letters of the Austrasian Frankish queen Brunhild; and the more global problems of power relations and identity transformations occurring in the world of late antiquity.
This paper engages with this discourse on civilizational inequality and the cultural dichotomy between the eastern Adriatic coast and its hinterland. Subversion of Braudel is best done using Braudelian tools, so the paper presents a longue-durèe examination of interaction between the Dalmatian coast and its hinterland from the Late Iron Age to the end of antiquity. The focus of enquiry is placed on tracing cultural mediation and exchange of ideas in the domain of religion through several different periods. The paper presents the eastern Adriatic hinterland as a distinct space of invention and interaction, where local traditions are continuously combined with outside influences in an original and unique fashion.
Two chronologically distinct examples are analysed. First is the negotiation of Graeco-Mediterranean and La Tène cultural influences in a late Iron Age indigenous religious context. Particular focus is placed on material finds from an indigenous sanctuary in Gorica near Grude in Herzegovina, dated from ca. seventh to first century BC. A second example is the use of ‘global’ cults, such as those of Silvanus and Diana, as an interface for communicating and displaying local and imperial Roman identity during the second and third century AD.
In this paper are analysed published results of recent excavations of early Christian complex and early medieval graves in burial mounds in the area of Ljubač near Nin. The original interpretation ascribed the destruction of the early Christian basilical complex and the appearance of early medieval graves to recently migrated Slavic groups. By analysing the existing information in a wider context, this paper offers alternative interpretation of the finds, discussing methodological problems encountered by the Croatian archaeologists attempting to identify early medieval Slavs in Dalmatia.
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 post-modern 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 isworth 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."
Modern historical scholarship has always accepted, more or less suspiciously, the stories of the arrival of the Croats, and more generally, the arrival of the Slavs in post-Roman Illyricum in the treatise De administrando imperio, as codified reflections of historical realities. Criticised and praised, they have never been fully rejected. The stories of Constantine Porphyrogenitus simply appear too good to be rejected, taking into account the lack of written sources which deal with this region between the 7th and 9th centuries. Therefore, it is not surprising that generations of archaeologists and historians have put valiant efforts in order to “prove” and “illustrate” them in the positivist framework. However, analysis of the narratives reveals Constantine’s stories of the Croat arrival as nothing but a hi-stories, pseudohistorical narrative constructions, based upon historical memories manipulated through oral tradition by certain social groups from the region. These were inserted into the manual on foreign politics and geography, which was developed in the framework of Byzantine high culture of the 10th century. We cannot claim that there is no historical reality in those hi-stories of the arrival from the DAI. Unfortunately, it is even more difficult on the basis of the existing sources to claim that one might have a key for their deciphering and distillation from the identity- and narrative-discourses and memories of the past, in which are they embedded.""""
/ Breberium / Bribir. U tekstu se prezentira pregled terenskog rada, njegovi rezultati te arheološki predmeti pronađeni i izučavani u ovoj sezoni. Obrađeni materijal se odnosi na bribirsku rotundu i arhitektonske strukture oko nje.
and studied during this season. This material relates both to the rotunda church and to built structures postdating it.
Ovaj referat razmatra makropovijesnu i mikropovijesnu sliku prostora na ušću Kupe u Savu, u periodu njegovog umrežavanja u strukture globaliziranog mediteranskog imperija, koji se najčešće identificira sa svojom metropolom – Rimom. Promjene u strukturi odnosa među elitom imperijalne metropole u 2. st. pr. Kr., prenose se na imperijalne periferije i pogranične zone gdje se imperijalna politička moć počinje projicirati direktno, radije negoli posredno. Pomicanje pogranične zone imperija u Panoniju izaziva restruktuiranje lokalnih političkih arhitektura moći, što se najbolje vidi kroz uništenje indigenog političkog saveza predvođenog Segestikom, i uspostavom vojnog logora Siscije. Indigena politička infrastruktura modificira se vojnom silom, a Siscija postaje fizičko uporište iz kojeg se vojna sila imperija projicira dalje u panonsku nizinu, preobražavajući pograničnu zonu u imperijalni artefakt.
Many thanks to Archaeon and the Museum for perfect organisation.
- Corpus of Early Medieval Sculpture, vols. 1-3.