Project Details
Projekt
The Illyrian city of Dimal: Its place within the Illyrian kingdom and the Mediterranean world
Subject Area
Classical, Roman, Christian and Islamic Archaeology
Term
since 2025
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 568688931
The aim of the present project is the final evaluation and publication of a German-Albanian cooperation project to investigate the Illyrian city of Dimal, which was carried out between 2010 and 2015 by the Albanian Archaeological Institute and the Archaeological Institute of the University of Cologne under the direction of the two applicants. While the fieldwork and its immediate evaluation have been completed and only require final checks, parts of the material analyses and a comprehensive evaluation of the new findings are still pending. In addition, there is the extraordinary opportunity to evaluate the results of an earlier Albanian excavation at Dimal (1963-1974), which offers important additions, particularly in terms of a rich and exceptional find material. Dimal was an important Illyrian hill-top settlement of the Parthini, whose beginnings reach back to the early Iron Age. From the 4th century BC onwards, an increasingly intensive trade and cultural contact with the nearby Greek port city of Apollonia and, via the Via Egnatia, with the eastern Mediterranean can be discerned, which gained additional dynamic after the region's integration into the Roman Empire from 205 BC until the abrupt abandonment of the city at the end of the 1st century BC. Dimal offers ideal conditions for understanding the complex transcultural processes of an Illyrian population at the crossroads between the Greek and Roman spheres during the Hellenistic period, exemplified by its urban development and the gradually changing material culture of its inhabitants. A late antique re-settlement of the 5th/6th century AD offers further interesting insights into a rural settlement structure of this period. The ultimate goal is to study and evaluate the long-term development of Dimal in the broader historical, economic and cultural context of southern Illyria. In fact, the planned publication will be the first of its kind on an Illyrian hill-top settlement, making the project an important contribution to a still under-researched region of the ancient Mediterranean. For the realization of the proposed project, the implementation of a working group at the Archaeological Institute of the University of Cologne is envisaged, for which the co-applicant Belisa Muka is asking for an own position. The focus of the work is on the examination of the various material groups, which are additionally supplemented by targeted archaeometric analyses. The project will conclude with a hybrid publication with the excavation data made available online (iDAI.field) and a monographic publication as an e-book on the open access portal Propylaeum.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
Co-Investigators
Professor Dr. Maxime Rageot; Professor Dr. Roland Schwab
