Brnjica culture

Central Balkan archaeological culture

Brnjica culture
Geographical range	Kosovo
Period	Late Bronze Age
Dates	14th c. BCE – 10th/9th c. BCE^[1]^[2]
Type site	Donja Brnjica
Major sites	Hisar Hill
Preceded by	Urnfield culture
Followed by	La Tène culture

The Brnjica culture (Serbian: Брњица, Albanian: Bërnica), alternatively Donja Brnjica-Gornja Stražava cultural group, is a Late Bronze Age archaeological culture in present-day Kosovo and Serbia dating between the 14th and 10th/9th centuries BCE.^[1]^[3]

Description

The Brnjica cultural group was a Late Bronze Age cultural manifestation in what was to become Dardania, closely connected to the Balkan-Danubian complex.^[1]^[4]^[3] It dates between the 14th and 10th/9th centuries BCE.^[1] In Yugoslavian historiography, starting from Milutin Garašanin, the Brnjica culture was interpreted as the "Daco-Moesian" and non-"Illyrian" linguistic component of the later Dardani,^[4]^[3] an Iron Age Palaeo-Balkan group appearing as an Illyrian people in ancient literary tradition.^[1]

The Brnjica culture is characterized by several groups:^[3]

Kosovo with Raska and Pester
South and West Morava confluence zone
Leskovac-Nis
South Morava-Pcinja-Upper Vardar

Brnjica type pottery has been found in Blageovgrad, Plovdiv, and a number of sites in Pelagonia, Lower Vardar, the island of Thasos and Thessaly dating to 13th and 12th century BCE.^[3]

Sites

Donja Brnjica

The main site of the culture is a necropolis at Donja Brnjica, (Albanian: Bërnica e Poshtme) near Pristina.

Hisar

Hisar is a multi-periodal settlement at a hill near Leskovac.

Traces of life of the Brnjica culture (8th century BCE) are seen in the plateau that was protected by a deep moat with a palisade on its inner side, a fortification similar to that of another fortification on the Gradac site in Lanište in the Velika Morava basin.^[5]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Drançolli 2020, pp. 4311–4312.
^ Stojic 2006, p. 80.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Stojic, Milorad (2006). "Regional characteristics of the Brnjica cultural group" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2011-07-23. Retrieved 2010-08-03.
^ ^a ^b Vranić 2014, p. 35.
^ Milorad Stojic: Ferrous metallurgy center of the Brnjica cultural group (14th–13th centuries BCE) at the Hisar site in Leskovac. MJoM Metalurgija - Journal of Metallurgy, UDC:669.1

Bibliography

Drançolli, Jahja (2020). "Kosova: Archaeological Heritage". In Claire Smith (ed.). Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer International Publishing. pp. 4308–4319. ISBN 9783030300166.
Vranić, Ivan (2014). "The "Hellenization" process and the Balkan Iron Age archaeology". In Staša Babić, Marko Jankovic (ed.). The Edges of the Roman World. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 33–47. ISBN 9781443861540.