Stična

Questioning what types of beads would have been in use during the Iron Age in Britain and drawing deeply from the work of the late bead researcher Margaret Guido I’ve amassed a collocation of information which one can draw from not just for bead information concerning the Iron Age Celts in the Isles, but also for those interested in Celtic adornment and bead reproduction.  Please note, my citing is poor the majority of information and many of the pictures have come from Guido’s work ‘The Glass Beads of the Prehistoric and Roman Periods in Britain and Ireland’, (London:  The Society of Antiquaries of London, 1978).  I want to thank not just Guido for her amass of research, but also a wealth of museums and other sources for their invaluable photos, many of which I have to note are copyright protected.

The burial deposits from the grave with a cuirass from tumulus 52 or IV at Stična, excavated by the Duchess of Mecklenburg in 1913, have already been published four times and have been differently presented each time. None of the four versions completely corresponds with the data in the notes of the Duchess’s secretary, Gustav Goldberg. Of the finds that have previously been attributed to this grave, only a cuirass, a kernos and a small pot can definitely be ascribed to it. In addition, a fluted ciborium and spearheads may derive from the grave. Two lids, two smaller ciboria and 67 dome-shaped loop-backed buttons are certainly not from this burial. The smaller ciboria and the lids are from another Stična grave, from Magdalenska gora or perhaps some other cemetery of the Dolenjska (Lower Carniola) Hallstatt culture, while the dome-shaped buttons originate from the cemetery at Stražni dol near Golek pri Vinici. Rainer-Maria Weiss ascribed a belt-plate with figurative ornament depicting a procession of men and a woman to a grave with a cuirass from tumulus 52. Biba Teržan ascribed the same belt-plate to a grave with a double-crested helmet from tumulus 55 or VI at Stična. However, the belt-plate is not from any of these graves.
The grave groups of the Mecklenburg Collection are unreliable. Finds from other graves from the same or even from a different site have sometimes been added to the Hallstatt period graves from Magdalenska gora and Stična. Some are undoubtedly from the Late Hallstatt-La Tène cemetery at Stražni dol near Golek pri Vinici (e.g. dome-shaped buttons of the Vinica type, bronze sun rings, bronze shepherd’s crook pins and amber beads of Palavestra’s types 8d and 8e). Conversely, some grave groups from Golek pri Vinici contain Hallstatt period finds that were excavated by the Duchess on Magdalenska gora and at Stična.

The way to reconstruct three important Hallstatt helmet graves from Vače: archives, the German language, and logic

The finds from Hallstatt period graves in Dolenjska, which came in the 1880s to the Regional Museum of Carniola in Ljubljana and the Natural History Court Museum in Vienna, were mostly still inventoried typologically without data on the grave group itself. This is why researchers, who based their knowledge only on the data in the inventory books, didn’t know the accompanying finds of the objects they were dealing with.
In the case of exceptional graves, like those with a bronze helmet or a bronze vessel, archival documents (letters, lists, diaries, drawings etc.) and sometimes even printed reports enable a reconstruction, at least partially, of the grave group.

At the Hallstatt cemeteries near Vače, in the years 1881/1882, 1887, and 1889, three graves with a double-crested helmet were discovered. In the paper of Stane Gabrovec on the Hallstatt helmets of the south-eastern Alpine region (Arheološki vestnik 13–14, 1962–1963) and in the book of Markus Egg (Italische Helme, 1986), only the grave group of the first one of these three graves is quoted and not even in its entirety.
The first grave was discovered on August 11, 1881, during excavations paid by Ferdinand von Hochstetter, the president of the Prehistoric Commission in Vienna, and directed by the museum preparator Ferdinand Schulz from Ljubljana. Near the relatively well preserved skeleton of a young man were found two iron spearheads, an iron socketed axe, an unornamented rectangular belt plate, a small hollow bone cylinder, and a spindle whorl. To the same skeleton belonged the famous Vače situla and a fragmented hollow spiral bracelet of bronze sheet, found about 7 months later by a peasant boy from Klenik near Vače Janez Grilc.
The second grave was unearthed for the museum in Vienna on  December 7, 1887, by France Peruci, the schoolteacher of Vače. It contained a skeleton of a warrior and a skeleton of a horse without a skull. Near the first skeleton lay the bronze helmet, an iron socketed axe, a leather strap, a well-preserved hollow spiral bracelet, two bronze, and two ceramic vessels. Peruci found near the horse’s skeleton an iron bit and four bronze strap-dividers. When Ignacij Hribar, the owner of the field, heard about the rich finds, he chased the teacher away and continued to excavate by himself. About 2 m from the horse’s skeleton he found its skull together with two spearheads, a badly preserved bronze rectangular belt plate, several iron rings, and an iron bell similar to Scythian bronze bells. Biba Teržan, who still prepares the publication of the finds from Vače kept in Vienna, has wrongly assigned the objects found later by Hribar to a separate grave.
The third grave was discovered on August 22, 1889, by excavator Jernej Pečnik. It contained a skeleton and, beside it, a bronze helmet, rectangular belt plate decorated with two rabbits and four birds, two rectangular belt attachments, two Certosa fibulae of type XIII after Teržan, two iron spearheads with mountings of bronze sheet, an iron socketed axe, an iron knife, an iron mace, and two red pottery vessels. The finds came to the Ljubljana Regional Museum.
All three graves with a double-crested helmet from Vače can reliably be dated to the later part of the Certosa phase!

The text was proof-read by Emily Zavodny from Penn State University (USA).

Ljubljana, April 28, 2015

In 2010, seven years ago, the second volume of the publication of the Hallstatt period barrows from Stična, the studies, was published in Ljubljana by the National Museum of Slovenia (Narodni muzej Slovenije): Stična II/2, Katalogi in monografije 38. The first volume, the catalogue, appeared in 2006: Stična II/1, Katalogi in monografije 37. The main chapters in the second volume were written by Stane Gabrovec (born in 1920) and Biba Teržan (born in 1947), both professors at the University of Ljubljana and ordinary members of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
The chapter by Gabrovec (pp. 7-60) gives an overview dealing first with the history of research of tumulus 48, tumulus 5 and some others (especially those excavated by the Duchess of Mecklenburg), as well as describing the topography of the tumulus cemetery of Stična. In the second part of this chapter Gabrovec writes about the burial rite, stratigraphy and chronology of barrow 48. For several reasons everyone expected that his study would provide a clear picture of the interments in tumulus 48, which contained almost 200 graves. It was expected that he would provide correct dates for all the datable graves, with a detailed analysis of the burial rite and the grave architecture (e. g. the dimensions of the grave pits) and describe in detail the range of objects found in the graves: fibulae, weapons, belt fittings, ring ornaments, glass and amber beads, ceramics and bronze vessels.
We should not forget that barrow 48 is of crucial importance for understanding the evolution of the Dolenjska group of the Hallstatt culture from the 7th to the 5th centuries BC, because the grave groups from Magdalenska gora and Stična in the Mecklenburg Collection are mixed and useless for scientific research, and because the hundreds of graves excavated before 1914, mostly by Jernej Pečnik and Ferdinand Schulz for the museums in Ljubljana and in Vienna at different sites of the Dolenjska group, are often not reliable at all.
Gabrovec’s first chronology of the Dolenjska group was already created in 1963. The last two phases, the Certosa and Negova phases, were convincingly subdivided into two sub-phases in 1976 by his student Biba Teržan in her study of the Certosa type fibulae. In the last extensive presentation of this group, published in 1987 in volume 5 of The Prehistory of Yugoslav Lands (Praistorija jugoslavenskih zemalja), Gabrovec devoted a lot of space to the chronology. He divided the whole time span of the Dolenjska group into five main phases: Podzemelj, Stična, Serpentine, Certosa and Negova. The main types of each of these phases were presented separately in six figures. If we take, for example, fig. 4 on p. 57 illustrating objects of the Serpentine phase (stupanj zmijolikih fibula), there are about one third which are in reality earlier, from the Stična phase, or later, from the Certosa phase. Earlier are the serpentine fibula no. 8 (cf. grave 48/27 from Stična) and the bracelet no. 14 (a thick solid bracelet with overlapping tapering ends, which is decorated with groups of transverse incisions or narrow ribs). To the types, which appear only in the Certosa phase and not before, belong the double-crested helmet, the pottery with indented walls (nos. 17, 18 and 21), the footed vase of type 10 after Dular (no. 20), and as well very probably the decorated rectangular bronze belt plate no. 16. The rest of the fibulae (nos. 6, 7, 9-13: serpentine fibulae with a saddle-shaped bow, leech fibulae, serpentine fibulae with wings, fibulae with a ribbed bow and a long foot, serpentine fibulae with plates, and band bow fibulae), the spiral band earrings (no. 12), the ribbed bracelets and anklets with overlapping tapering ends (no. 13) and the red-and-black vessels (nos. 22 and 23: the footed vase of type 9 after Dular and the situla with horizontal ribs) are without any doubt typical of the Serpentine phase!
In his study from 2010 Gabrovec ascribed a limited number of graves from barrow 48 to four stratigraphic and chronological phases: I, II, III and IV (pp. 46 and 55-56, fig. 21 on p. 40 and fig. 23 on p. 50).
Among the graves of phase I appears grave 19-22, a supposed central chamber, which did not exist and was a pure fabrication by Biba Teržan (cf. https://www.academia.edu/29260635 and https://www.academia.edu/11505808, Abstract). Gabrovec assigned to phase II not only graves of the Stična 2 phase, but also several graves of the following Serpentine phase (e. g. nos. 136, 147 and 151). Similarly, he ascribed to phase III not only graves of the Serpentine phase, but also one grave of the Stična 2 phase (no. 74) and two from the Certosa phase (nos. 85 and 99). Finally, in his list of graves of phase IV, not only graves from the Certosa phase, but also some of the preceding Serpentine phase appear (e.g. nos. 44 and 171). That means that graves from the Serpentine phase with their typical inventory (serpentine, leech and band bow fibulae, ribbed bracelets and anklets with overlapping tapering ends, spiral band earrings, red-and-black pottery) were ascribed by him to three chronological phases, which is completely wrong.
Especially poor is his presentation of the last phase IV. Although he first assigned to it no less than 97 graves (p. 44) and then (p. 55) about 19 graves with fibulae (13 serpentine, 19 Certosa, two animal-shaped and one three-knobbed), in the table on fig. 21 with typical graves of the four chronological phases (I-IV) there are only 10 graves of phase IV (cf. p. 47, Mit Beginn). They are all female and only two contain fibulae (nos. 8 and 36). All male graves of the Certosa phase and almost all graves with fibulae of this phase have simply disappeared!!?
To emend this false picture, I have written a study for the journal Prilozi 33, published by the Institute of Archaeology in Zagreb, in which I ascribed to Phase IV (= Certosa phase) 36 graves and presented also 36 metal (iron and bronze), glass, amber and pottery objects, which are typical for it.
The chapter by Gabrovec on the Hallstatt barrows from Stična, especially the sub-chapter on the chronology (pp. 46-55), is unfortunately, contrary to expectation not a scientific work. Had its author been a student of archaeology, in no way could he get a positive mark for it.
The publication of the Stična II/2 volume was made possible by Biba Teržan, the main co-author, and by the two reviewers, Janez Dular and Mitja Guštin. They are all students of Gabrovec and they all got the prize of the Slovenian Archaeological Society for their life’s work. This prize is given to those archaeologists, who contributed through their main achievements to the development of Slovenian archaeology and to the growth of its reputation at home and abroad. Stična II/2 volume has thrown a shadow on the work of Gabrovec in 2010, when the late professor reached 90 years. The duty of Teržan, Dular and Guštin was simply to emend it very much or not to include it in the publication. As a member of the editorial board I had no possibility to react, because the chief and responsible editor Peter Turk, who did his job in an extremely poor way, did not allow sight of the submitted texts and illustrations to three members of it (Istenič, Knific and me). The volume with studies on the Stična Hallstatt barrows (Stična II/2) has very much diminished the reputation not only of the publisher (The National Museum of Slovenia in Ljubljana), but also of the whole of Slovenian Early Iron Age archaeology.

The abstract was kindly proof read by John Collis from the University of Sheffield (UK).

Avče in the Soča Valley, May 2, 2017 (Tuesday)

In 1992 the Narodni muzej Slovenije (National Museum of Slovenia) in Ljubljana acquired a collection of 25 archaeological finds from Matej Magajna in Ljubljana, which he claimed to have inherited from his relatives. The nicest object is an iron socketed axe with a facetted socket, decorated with ten vertical inlaid bronze strips and two zoomorphic figures on the blade: a bird and a quadruped. Although in the 1997 publication of the collection it is said that the provenience of the objects was not known, in 2006 and 2007 Andrej Preložnik and Mitja Guštin assigned the axe to the important Iron Age site Šmihel pod Nanosom in the Notranjska region or its surroundings. 
The typical composition of the collection, which comprises pottery, axes, spearheads, knives, iron ladles, a two-pronged fork and ceramic net weights, widely datable from the Early Iron Age to the New Age, the fact that the majority of the finds has very good comparisons among the finds from the Ljubljanica River, and the absence of green patina on the copper alloy decorative elements of the socketed axe and one knife indicate that the objects of the Magajna Collection originate from the Ljubljanica.
Three iron socketed axes from Stična, Vače and from the Mecklenburg Collection, the last one assigned to the tumulus cemetery of Magdalenska gora, are decorated with horizontal zigzag bronze strips and can be dated to the Certosa phase, but the decorated socketed axe from the Ljubljanica River is most likely from the Negova phase, based on its facetted socket.

The first modern relative chronology of the Dolenjska group of the Hallstatt culture was created by Stane Gabrovec in 1963. He divided the Early Iron Age in Dolenjska in the following phases: Podzemelj 1 and 2, Stična 1 and 2, the phase of Scythian influences, and the Negova Helmet phase.
In 1971 he and Otto-Herman Frey made some changes. They gave to the phase of Scythian influences a new name (Certosa Fibulae phase) and inserted a new phase between this one and the Stična 2 phase: the Double-Crested Helmets phase. Biba Teržan, a student of Gabrovec, renamed the Double-Crested Helmets phase the Serpentine Fibulae phase in her 1976 study on Certosa type fibulae, and subdivided the last two phases, the Certosa and Negova phases, into an earlier and a later part.
Such a division was used also by Gabrovec in his still basic study on the Dolenjska group, published in the fifth volume of Praistorija jugoslavenskih zemalja (Sarajevo 1987). There Gabrovec exhaustively and systematically presented the typical types of finds and graves of every single phase.
The chronology chapter in Janez Dular’s book Halštatske nekropole Dolenjske (Hallstatt cemeteries of Dolenjska, Ljubljana 2003) is not original, but is just a summary of the Gabrovec’s chapter on the Dolenjska group chronology from 1987. He added many pictures of typical graves to the text, several of which were published after 1987. His dating of the small finds, especially of the annular jewellery and of the pottery, is sometimes incorrect.
In 2010 a monograph with studies on the Early Iron Age barrows from Stična (Stična II/2) was published. The main chapters were written by Gabrovec (Barrows of Stična) and by Teržan (Stična sketches). Gabrovec presented a chronological division of barrow 48, which differs significantly from his 1987 chronology. His four chronological phases are mostly incorrect. In the chronological table on p. 293, Teržan dated some male graves from barrow 48, most of them also incorrectly. Central grave 19–22, ascribed to the Podzemelj phase, never existed and in reality comprises finds from the Stična 2 and the Certosa phases. The important grave 33 (a warrior’s grave in a square stone grave chamber) was dated around 150 years too early by Teržan.
Finally, in 2014 Teržan decided to give up Gabrovec’s designations of the early phases (Podzemelj 1 and 2 and Stična 1) and introduced three new phases without any good reasons: an iron horizon, a horizon of the earliest horse graves, and a Boat Fibulae horizon.
Gabrovec’s still basic chronology from 1987 can easily be improved using only the reliable grave groups (mostly from Stična and Novo mesto). New research, conducted by the author in the last five years, has brought a lot of new details, while the general picture remained unchanged, with new views on the development of pottery, of some types of weapons, and of the annular jewellery, as well as new datings of some important graves.
Gabrovec’s improved chronology of the Dolenjska group with its nine certain phases is very important for all neighbouring cultures, where such a fine division cannot be made.

The results of recent research carried out on the finds from the excavations of the Duchess of Mecklenburg in Slovenia show that many of the grave groups from the Hallstatt period tumuli on Magdalenska gora and at Stična as presented in the books of H. Hencken and P. S. Wells are incorrect. The changeable history of this collection has led to some confusion of the finds not only from the various graves but also from the different cemeteries excavated by the Duchess of Mecklenburg.
Only two of the six or seven ceramic vessels assigned until now to the famous cuirass grave from Stična, the finds from which are mostly kept in Berlin, were actually found within it. Also the 67 bronze buttons do not come from this burial, but from the cemetery of Golek pri Vinici dating to the Late Hallstatt and La Tène periods. The belt-plate with striding figures was also not discovered in the cuirass or double-crested helmet graves from Stična, as was assumed by some experts.
The confusion of the grave groups from the Mecklenburg collection becomes especially evident when considering the compound type helmet with the missing brim from grave 3/IV of Magdalenska gora. Parts of its brim have been assigned to grave 15/V from Stična as well as to grave 97 from Golek pri Vinici. The usefulness of the Mecklenburg collection as well as of both the publications mentioned above for scientific research is therefore very limited.

Secondo Stane Gabrovec e Biba Teržan nel centro del tumulo 48 di Stična, senza  dubbio il più importante tumulo finora scavato del gruppo hallstattiano di Dolenjska, vi era una camera sepolcrale di legno di grandi dimensioni: essa era lunga circa 8 m, larga circa 5,5 m e alta circa 3,5 m. Secondo Biba Teržan la camera era circondata e coperta da lastre di pietra. La camera fu quasi completamente depredata probabilmente già in epoca hallstattiana. Tra i pochi oggetti rimasti ci sono una preziosa bardatura di cavallo in bronzo e in ambra e un’ ascia di ferro con decorazione a intarsio in bronzo. Gabrovec e Teržan hanno trovato il confronto più stringente della bardatura nel Circolo del Tridente in Vetulonia, databile secondo loro al più tardi all’ultimo quarto del VIII secolo a.C. Per questo hanno spiegato la bardatura come un’ importazione italica. Secondo loro il guerriero, inumato in questa camera eccezionale, forse non era un indigeno, ma un principe etrusco, venuto a Stična da Vetulonia, possibilmente uno dei fondatori del grande abitato hallstattiano di Stična. 
Durante gli scavi di un tumulo di Stična, condotti già attorno l’anno 1853 da un tenente Nettelbach dal Mecklenburgo, sono stati trovati in una tomba quadrangolare, circondata da pietre, tra l’altro anelli, perle di vetro e un oggetto, in lamina di bronzo e decorato con due testine di cavallo, ognuna di esse con un foro grande e uno piccolo. Secondo Biba Teržan l’oggetto è un montante laterale di un morso di cavallo, tipico per la tarda fase villanoviana o la prima fase orientalizzante, prodotto in Italia centrale, probabilmente nel Piceno.
La tomba 320 della necropoli a incinerazione, scavata nel sito di Dvorišče SAZU (Cortile dell’Accademia slovena delle scienze e delle arti) a Ljubljana,  conteneva tra l’altro un frammento di un oggetto bronzeo, costituito da un anello con due piccole punte da una parte: sull’altra parte esso proseguiva con due sbarre orizzontali, attaccate al resto di una placca di bronzo. Il frammento fu interpretato da Harald Außerlechner in 2012 come un’ansa a disco di una tazza di bronzo etrusca. La grande maggioranza dei vasi di questa foggia proviene dalla Toscana, dal Lazio e dall’Emilia-Romagna. Ljubljana sarebbe l’unico sito fuori della penisola appenninica.
Le ricerche, condotte negli ultimi anni dall’autore, hanno rivelato che in tutti e tre casi si può dimostrare una spiegazione molto diversa da quelle sopra presentate.
Bibliografia:
S. Gabrovec, Stična 2/1, Gomile starejše železne dobe. Katalog (Ljubljana 2006).
S. Gabrovec, B. Teržan, Stična 2/2, Gomile starejše železne dobe. Razprave (Ljubljana 2010).
I. Puš, Prazgodovinsko žarno grobišče v Ljubljani, Razprave 1. razreda SAZU 13/2 (Ljubljana 1982).
H. Außerlechner, Etruskische Bronzetassen mit Zieraufsatz, Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica 44, 2012, 79–116.

The Slovenian abstract is followed by an English one.
(Izvleček) V letu 2017 bo veliko dela z urejanjem zbornika mednarodnega znanstvenega sestanka o latenizaciji na območju med jugovzhodnimi Alpami in hrvaško-srbskim Podonavjem, ki sva ga s prof. Karlom Stroblom iz Celovca priredila novembra 2012 v Kobaridu. Serena Vitri iz Trsta je zanj napisala članek o najmlajših grobovih grobišča Misincinis v Paularu, ki so zelo revni in večinoma vsebujejo najmlajše certoške fibule.
Moj članek o grobovih certoške stopnje v gomili 48 iz Stične je bil objavljen v reviji Prilozi Instituta za arheologiju u Zagrebu 33 za leto 2016. V njem je seznam ženskih in moških grobov te stopnje, na štirih tablah pa so predstavljene značilne najdbe (fibule, orožje, deli pasu, konjska oprema, obročast nakit, steklene in jantarne jagode, keramične in bronaste posode).
Za objavo v zborniku znanstvenega sestanka o Segestiki/Sisciji, ki je potekal septembra 2015 v Zagrebu, sem oddal članek o dačanskih brzdah iz pozne latenske in zgodnje cesarske dobe, ki so bile najdene v Kolpi v Sisku in v grobu konja, ki ga je pred letom 1904 pri Orešcu v dolini Drave izkopal župnik Stjepan Tompak.
Na mednarodnih sestankih sem imel tri predstavitve: aprila 2016 v Sarajevu o relativni kronologiji dolenjske halštatske skupine, maja 2016 v Trenčianskih Teplicah na Slovaškem o kovinskih najdbah iz naselja stopnje LT D1 pri Trenčianskih Bohuslavicah in oktobra 2016 v Forliju o grobnici etruščanskega princa in italski brzdi iz Stične ter o etruščanski bronasti skodeli iz Ljubljane.
Grob z negovsko čelado, ki je bil lani izkopan blizu Hrastnika, je vseboval tudi bogato okrašeno pasno spono z rebrom in dolgim kavljem, ki ima dve okrašeni primerjavi v Sloveniji (v Brezjah pri Trebelnem in v Ljubljanici) in tri neokrašene z najdišč v bližini Gardskega jezera v severni Italiji.
Na občasni razstavi Tolminskega muzeja Prapoti skozi praproti, ki je bila odprta 9. decembra 2016 (avtor Miha Mlinar), je predstavljen pomemben surovec iz žarnogrobiščne dobe. Leta 1964 sta ga na Kobilniku blizu Tolmina našla dva iskalca z detektorjem. Poklonjen je bil muzeju in inventariziran, potem pa dolgo let založen, dokler ni bil novembra 2016 ponovno odkrit.
Borut Bezjak s Trat blizu Šentilja je v začetku januarja letos na bregu Mure našel dva kosa železa. Ko sem 13. februarja s posredovanjem Saše Djure Jelenko iz Slovenj Gradca dobil 13 fotografij obeh kosov, se mi je posvetilo, da gre za dela izjemne poznolatenske brzde s podbradnico italskega izvora.
(Abstract)
Event: Research programme day at the Institute of Archaeology.
Presentation title: Early and Late Iron Age.
A lot of work will be devoted this year to the editing of the Acts of the International Scientific Conference on Latenization in the territory from the south-eastern Alps to the Croatian-Serbian Danube region, organized in November 2012 by Professor Karl Strobel in Klagenfurt and myself. Serena Vitri from Trieste has written a paper on the latest graves in the Hallstatt cemetery of Misincinis at Paularo in Carnia, which are quite modestly furnished and mostly contain the latest Certosa fibulae.
My paper on the graves of the Certosa phase in Early Iron Age barrow 48 from Stična was published in the journal Prilozi Instituta za arheologiju u Zagrebu 33 for 2016. The paper contains a list of the female and male graves of this phase and presents the typical finds on four plates (fibulae, weapons, belt parts, horse gear, annular jewellery, glass and amber beads, ceramic and bronze vessels).
For the Acts of the Conference on Segestica/Siscia, organized in September 2015 in Zagreb, I submitted a paper on Late La Tène and Early Imperial Dacian horse bits from the river Kupa in Sisak and from a horse grave excavated by parish priest Stjepan Tompak before 1904 near Orešac in the Drava Valley.
I gave three presentations at international conferences: in April 2016 in Sarajevo on the relative chronology of the Dolenjska Hallstatt group; in May 2016 in Trenčianske Teplice in Slovakia on some metal finds from the LT D1 settlement at Trenčianske Bohuslavice; and in October 2016 in Forli on the Etruscan princely grave and Italic horse bit from Stična, and also on an Etruscan bronze cup from Ljubljana.
The recently excavated grave with a Negova type helmet from the vicinity of Hrastnik in the Sava Valley also contained a richly decorated bronze belt plate that has two decorated parallels in Slovenia and three undecorated parallels in the surroundings of the Garda Lake in Northern Italy.
In the temporary exhibition Ancient Trails through Ferns in Tolminski muzej an important fragment of a bronze plano-convex ingot is displayed. It was found in 1964 by two metal detectorists on the Kobilnik hill near Tolmin, donated to the museum, misplaced, and on my initiative rediscovered in November 2016. 
Two iron objects were found in January 2017 in the river Mura by Borut Bezjak from Trate near Šentilj close to the Slovenian-Austrian border. On February 13 I obtained several photographs of them and discovered that they belong to an outstanding Italic curb bit from the Late La Tène period. 
The abstract was proof read by Nina Crummy from Colchester (UK).

The central wooden grave chamber of barrow 48 from Stična, which would according to Biba Teržan measure no less than 8 x 5.5 x 3.5 m, is an invention. It was dated by Stane Gabrovec and Teržan to the late 8th century BC and assigned to a warrior, who came to Stična from Vetulonia in Tuscany. The bronze horse gear was in no case imported from Vetulonia. The footed red and black vases from finds 20 and 21 can’t be dated earlier than to the Stična 2 phase! The iron socketed axe, decorated with zigzag bronze bands, differs a lot from the axe from Frög in Carinthia (barrow K) and has only two good comparisons, in the Mecklenburg Collection and at Vače, both dated to the Certosa phase.

Neither the archaeologists who dealt with the Iapodic cemeteries in the Una Valley in Bosnia and Herzegovina nor those who studied Certosa fibulae have until now paid attention to the fact that almost all bronze Certosa fibulae of variant VII f from Jezerine in Pritoka and from Ribić lack the spring and pin. These are not preserved because they were of iron, like the springs and pins of bronze boat fibulae for example, that are typical for phase Stična 1 of the Dolenjska group of Hallstatt culture.
The appearance of late Certosa fibulae of variant VII f and of types X, XI/XII and XII with a bronze bow and foot and an iron spring and pin is limited to the territories of the Iapodes and the Colapiani in the regions of the Una Valley, Lika in Croatia, and the central and southern parts of Bela krajina in Slovenia. In these territories other two-part late Certosa fibulae appear along with the late Certosa fibulae with a two-part bronze-and-iron construction, but the spring and pin are made of bronze and were attached to the bow in different ways.
The two-part late Certosa fibulae with a bronze spring and pin are also known outside these territories, especially in the Notranjska, Kras, Friuli and Carnia regions. On the other hand exclusively one-part late Certosa fibulae are known from some large Hallstatt period cemeteries, like Magdalenska gora near Šmarje-Sap in Dolenjska and Most na Soči in the Soča Valley.
No less than ten grave groups from Magdalenska gora, excavated by the Duchess of Mecklenburg and published in 1978 by Hugh Hencken, contain two-part late Certosa fibulae with a bronze-and-iron or a bronze-and-bronze construction. Since such fibulae are completely missing among the other grave finds from this site, kept in the museums of Ljubljana and Vienna, but are quite common in the large cemetery of Golek pri Vinici, also excavated by the Duchess of Mecklenburg, it is evident that they originate from Golek pri Vinici and were only later added to the grave groups from Magdalenska gora. The Golek pri Vinici Late Hallstatt-La Tène cemetery is almost entirely unpublished, but color photos of the finds and the basic information on them are available in the online collections of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge, MA (USA): http://pmem.unix.fas.harvard.edu:8080/peabody/.
The presence of Certosa fibulae in graves of Magdalenska gora is known from Gustav Goldberg’s original notes. Thus, the appearance of two-part Certosa fibulae from Golek pri Vinici in the grave groups from Magdalenska gora means that those Certosa fibulae, which were originally found in them, were subsequently added to other graves from this and possibly other sites, excavated by the Duchess (Stična, Vače, Golek pri Vinici, etc.). The case of two-part late Certosa fibulae in the graves of the Mecklenburg Collection represents further proof that the grave groups from Magdalenska gora and Stična, excavated by the Duchess of Mecklenburg and uncritically published by Hugh Hencken and Peter Wells, are mixed to a very high degree and therefore not appropriate for serious scientific research.

The Slovenian abstract is followed by an English one.
(Izvleček) V ljubljanskem in berlinskem članku o prvem grobu z oklepom iz Stične, ki sta bila natisnjena v letih 2009 (Arheološki vestnik 60) in 2010 (Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica 42), sem pokazal, da so grobovi Mecklenburške zbirke v veliki meri zamešani, zaradi česar je ta zbirka skoraj popolnoma neuporabna za znanstvene raziskave.
Profesor Stane Gabrovec je leta 1987 v petem zvezku Prazgodovine jugoslovanskih dežel (Praistorija jugoslavenskih zemalja 5) dolenjsko skupino razdelil na pet časovnih stopenj (Podzemelj, Stična, kačasta, certoška in negovska). Vse razen kačaste je razdelil še na dve podstopnji. V monografiji Stična II/2 iz leta 2010 je Biba Teržan tudi to stopnjo razdelila na kačaste fibule 1 in 2, in sicer na podlagi treh grobov iz certoške stopnje (33, 76 in 49 iz gomile 48), ki je sledila kačasti!!? To razdelitev sta nekritično sprejela med drugim Sneža Tecco Hvala v knjigi o halštatskih gomilah na Magdalenski gori iz leta 2012 in Hrvoje Potrebica v knjigi o knezih železne dobe iz leta 2013. V članku Tecco Hvala o kačastih fibulah iz Slovenije (Arh. vest. 65, 2014, 123 ss) pa o kaki delitvi kačaste stopnje ni več govora.
Več pomembnih grobov dolenjske skupine je bilo doslej datiranih napačno, kar je povzročilo napačno datacijo vrst predmetov, ki so bili v teh grobovih. Med take spadata otroški grob 3 iz gomile v Volčjih Njivah in ženski grob I/26 s Hriba v Metliki. Za datacijo groba 3 so pomembne votla zapestnica iz tanke pločevine ter polni nanožnica in ovratnica, ki sta okrašeni s po petimi snopi ozkih prečnih reber (prim. Zagorje – S. Gabrovec, Arh. vest. 17, 1966,  t. 6: 6, in Duplica pri Kamniku – Gabrovec 1965, 102, št. 25, 110, op. 93 na str. 117, t. 7: 3; na obeh najdiščih gre za grobne najdbe iz certoške stopnje), za datacijo groba I/26 pa med drugim štiri narebrene nanožnice, od katerih sta dve sklenjeni, dve pa imata razprta konca.
Med najpomembnejša dognanja mojih raziskav zadnjih let sodita dve: nagubana keramika se ni pojavila pred certoško stopnjo, centralna grobnica stiške gomile 48 pa je izmišljena.
V zborniku Beiträge zur Hallstattzeit, ki je izšel leta 2015 pri nemški založbi Marie Leidorf, sem objavil tri študije o dveh grobovih z dvogrebenasto čelado z Vač, od katerih je eden vseboval vaško situlo, drugi pa pasno spono z živalskimi figurami, in o izjemni tulasti sekiri, ki je verjetno iz Ljubljanice. V katalogu arheološkega in numizmatičnega dela Sokličeve zbirke v Koroškem pokrajinskem muzeju v Slovenj Gradcu sem objavil študijo o stopnji Podzemelj 2, v kateri sem rekonstruiral dva pomembna bojevniška grobova iz okolice Šmarjete, izkopana že okrog leta 1883 in leta 1901. Za zagrebško revijo Prilozi Instituta za arheologiju 33, 2016 pa sem napisal članek o grobovih certoške stopnje gomile 48, ki jih je mnogo več, kot je napisano v monografiji Stična II/2 iz leta 2010.
(Abstract)
Event: Research programme day at the Institute of Archaeology.
Presentation title: The relative chronology and material culture of the Dolenjska group of the Hallstatt culture.
In two papers on the first cuirass grave from Stična and the Mecklenburg Collection (Ljubljana 2009 and Berlin 2010), I showed that grave groups from this collection are mixed to a very large extent and therefore almost completely useless for scientific research. 
In the fifth volume of Praistorija jugoslavenskih zemalja (1987), Professor Stane Gabrovec divided the Dolenjska group into five phases (Podzemelj, Stična, Serpentine, Certosa, and Negova). He further subdivided all but the Serpentine phase into two subphases. In the monograph Stična II/2 from 2010 Biba Teržan subdivided this phase into Serpentine fibulae 1 and 2 based on three graves from the Certosa phase (33, 76 and 49 from barrow 48), which in reality followed the Serpentine phase!!?
This subdivision was uncritically accepted by Sneža Tecco Hvala from Ljubljana in her book on the Hallstatt barrows from Magdalenska gora (2012) and by Hrvoje Potrebica from Zagreb in his book on the princes of the Iron Age (Kneževi željeznog doba 2013). In Tecco Hvala’s paper on Serpentine fibulae from Slovenia (Arh. vest. 65, 2014, 123 ss), however, the subdivision of the Serpentine phase wasn’t even mentioned.
Several important graves of the Dolenjska group were until now dated incorrectly, which caused wrong dates to be assigned to the types of objects found in them. These graves include the child’s grave 3 from the barrow at Volčje Njive and the female grave I/26 from Hrib in Metlika. The date of grave 3 is based on the hollow bracelet made of thin sheet and the solid anklet and torc decorated with five groups of narrow transversal ribs (cf. Zagorje – S. Gabrovec, Arh. vest. 17, 1966, Pl. 6: 6, and Duplica near Kamnik – Gabrovec 1965, 102, no. 25, 110, note 93 on p. 117, Pl. 7: 3; the other grave finds in both sites, found on the same occasion as the torcs, are from the Certosa phase), and for the date of grave I/26, among other finds, are four ribbed anklets, two annular and two penannular.
Two conclusions from my research over the last few years are especially important: indented pottery did not appear before the Certosa phase and the central grave chamber from barrow 48 at Stična is pure fiction.
In 2015, I published in the miscellany Beiträge zur Hallstattzeit, by the German publisher Marie Leidorf, three studies, two of them on two graves with a double-crested bronze helmet from Vače, the first of which contained the Vače situla and the second a belt plate with animal figures. The third study deals with an exceptional socketed axe, probably found in the River Ljubljanica. I contributed to the catalogue of the archaeological and numismatic part of the Soklič Collection in the Carinthian Regional Museum in Slovenj Gradec a study on the Podzemelj 2 phase. In this study, I reconstructed two important warrior graves from the vicinity of Šmarjeta in Dolenjska, which had been excavated sometime around 1883 and in 1901. Finally, I wrote a paper on the Certosa phase graves in barrow 48 from Stična, which are much more numerous than stated in the monograph Stična II/2 from the year 2010, which was published in the Zagrebian journal Prilozi Instituta za arheologiju 33, 2016.
The abstract was proof read by Emily Zavodny from the Penn State University (USA).

Abstract

PER ASPERA AD ASTRA. On the extreme importance of barrow 48 from Stična for research on the Hallstatt culture in Dolenjska

Burial mound 48 from Stična, excavated between 1946 and 1964, is extremely important for research on the Hallstatt culture in Dolenjska. Unfortunately, there are many wrong statements and conclusions about this tumulus in the 2010 publication (S. Gabrovec, B. Teržan, Stična II/2, Gomile starejše železne dobe. Razprave = Tumuli of the Early Iron Age. Studies). In my presentation in Zagreb on March 16, 2015, I explained only a few of them.
In 1987 Stane Gabrovec still thought that the central part of barrow 48 had been without any graves (Praistorija jugoslavenskih zemalja 5, Sarajevo 1987, Dolenjska grupa). Five years later, however, he changed his opinion and claimed that by the 8th century BC (Podzemelj phase) the first smaller barrow in the centre of the tumulus had been created and at its top find No. 22, which contained a harness of presumably Etruscan origin, had been dug in. In 2006 he and Biba Teržan finally came to the conclusion that find No. 22 together with finds 19, 20 and 21 belonged to a huge wooden central chamber from the 8th century BC, which was first surrounded and covered by stone slabs and then covered by the smaller earthen barrow.
The existence of such a chamber in barrow 48 is nothing but fiction. Would it have existed, in place of its walls the remains of wood and numerous stone slabs should have been discovered. Nothing like this has happened. The ornaments from the 8th century in the Circolo del tridente grave at Etruscan Vetulonia in Tuscany, made in the a jour technique, are definitely not identical to the ornaments from find No. 22 in barrow 48. Similarly, the socketed axe from the same find, decorated with inlaid bronze zigzag bands, has the best comparisons not in the 8th century axe from Frög/Breg in Carinthia, but in an axe from Vače and in an axe from the Mecklenburg collection, both reliably dated to the Certosa Fibulae phase.
The nail-shaped bronze object from stone grave chamber 33 in barrow 48, explained by Teržan as a Scythian pin (!), is without any doubt a bronze mace. Such maces are a local form. They appear only in richer warrior graves of the Dolenjska group and can be dated to the phases Certosa 2 and Negova 1!! The dating of chamber 33 to the beginning of the Serpentine Fibulae phase, as proposed by Teržan, is pure nonsense. Instead, the dating of Stane Gabrovec (cf. PJZ 5, 1987 and Arheološki vestnik 50, 1999, p. 152, at the end of the right column: “das ausgeraubte Grab 33 dem entwickelten Certosa-Horizont”) to the Certosa 2 phase is completely correct for several reasons.
Mail grave 76 has been dated by Teržan to the Serpentine Fibulae phase as well. It is surely later because of its pottery with indented walls, a footed vessel of type 10 after Janez Dular, and the handle of a ribbed bronze cist.
Until now, no Slovenian prehistorians have paid attention to the numerous wrong statements made in the 2010 publication Stična II/2. On the contrary, the non-existent central grave chamber of barrow 48 dated to the Podzemelj phase, has found its way into the scientific literature (cf. Dular, Tecco Hvala 2007, fig. 137). One of Biba Teržan’s students, in a dissertation that was later even printed, used the wrong division of the Serpentine Fibulae phase into two subphases, the wrong early dating of the socketed axe with inlaid ornaments from find No. 22 to the 8th century, and the erroneous statement of Stane Gabrovec that the pottery decorated with painted red and graphite black bands had appeared as early as in the Podzemelj phase. Janez Dular, a student of Gabrovec, had clearly shown already in 1982 that this type of pottery from graves of the Dolenjska group did not appear before the end of the Stična 2 phase and that it was dominant in the following Serpentine Fibulae phase!
A serious approach to dating the graves from barrow 48 shows without any problems that the earliest finds belong to the Stična 2 phase and the latest to the Certosa 2 phase.
As far as the beginning of the pottery with indented walls is concerned, Biba Teržan in 1990 expressed the opinion that it had appeared already by the Stična 2 phase. She supported this statement quoting several graves of this phase, which are not reliable or were wrongly dated (e.g. grave IV/20 from Znančeve njive in Novo mesto with three kernoi, dated by Teržan to the Stična 2 phase and by Gabrovec to the Serpentine Fibulae phase). If we take into consideration that the grave with three kernoi from Novo mesto, grave 3 from the barrow at Volčje Njive, and grave I/26 from Hrib at Metlika in Bela krajina are all from the Certosa Fibulae phase and not earlier, as well as the fact that none of the relatively numerous graves of the Serpentine Fibulae phase of barrow 48 of Stična contain vessels with indented walls, it is clear that the pottery with indented walls first appeared only in the Certosa Fibulae phase, which perfectly agrees with the situation in Northern Croatia.

Avče in the Soča Valley, April 27, 2015

The text was proof-read by Emily Zavodny from Pennsylvania State University, USA.

Abstract

This text, written by Biba Teržan and entitled “Kronološka skica (Chronological sketch)”, is a subchapter of the chapter “Stiške skice (Stična sketches)” in the scientific monograph by S. Gabrovec and B. Teržan, Stična II/2, Gomile starejše železne dobe. Razprave (Tumuli of the Early Iron Age. Studies), published in 2010 after a two year delay by the National Museum of Slovenia in Ljubljana.
It should only be used by archaeologists who are capable of critical reading. A detailed review of this text will be published elsewhere, but here I will direct your attention to two problematic cases.

The central grave chamber (grave 48/19–22)
Teržan has severe problems in her understanding of the situation in tumulus 48 and the dating of several important graves. Her assumption, that in the middle of the tumulus there was a huge wooden chamber measuring 5.5 x 8 x 3.5 m, surrounded and covered by stone slabs (Stična II/2, 192, the German translation is partly wrong, and 200), is pure fiction. She dates it to the Podzemelj 2 phase or to the late 8th century BC (ibidem, 276, fig. 42 on p. 293). According to her, the warrior buried in this chamber was nothing less than a leader (prvak, voditelj) of the first generation of the Stična population (ibidem, 223 and 224, the German translation is not correct) and maybe even a king (ibidem, 272: im Sinne eines “Königs”). Teržan also ascribed to the central grave find 22, composed of several bronze ornaments, interpreted by her as an Etruscan harness (ibidem, 48, Fig. 22 and p. 276), and a badly preserved iron socketed axe with inlaid bronze zigzag bands on the socket (Gabrovec 1992, 211, Fig. 9: 26).



The ground plan of tumulus 48 at Stična (after Stična II/2, 50, Fig. 23).

She writes that the best comparison (Stična II/2, 277: Die beste Parallele...) for this axe is the iron axe from tumulus K at Frög/Breg in Carinthia, which is decorated with three horizontal golden wires below the mouth (Gleirscher 2011, 51, Fig. 1) and can be dated at the latest to the middle of the 8th century BC. This is simply not true. The decorated axe from find 22 in tumulus 48 has only two close comparisons. One was excavated by the Duchess of Mecklenburg and assigned to grave IV/21 from Magdalenska gora. Although the grave groups of the Mecklenburg Collection are not reliable, and the finds assigned in 1933 to one site could also originate from some other site where the Duchess excavated (Magdalenska Gora, Stična, Vače, Vinica and some others), in this case it is clear that the axe (Hencken 1978, 116, Fig. 57f), because of its ornamentation, belonged with a pair of spearheads that, on the basis of an old photo, were both stuck into the same iron sheath (ibidem, p. 20, Figs. 57a–c). Both the sheath and the spearheads with polygonal cross-section sockets date to the later part of the Certosa phase. The axe, having exactly the same inlaid decoration as the socket of the longer spearhead, should be dated to the same phase.
The other axe, decorated like the axe from find 22 of tumulus 48 at Stična, was excavated by Josef Szombathy in 1883 from grave 4 at the site of Cvetež B near Vače. This grave must be dated to the Certosa phase because of a bronze hollow armlet with overlapping ends, as well as a decorated bronze hollow globular pendant of the Posočje type (Božič 2011, 242–244).
During one tea session at the Institute’s table, I informed my colleague Janez Dular, one of the two reviewers of the monograph Stična II/2, about this axe. He has since changed his mind and agrees with me that the axe from find 22 was much later than stated by Teržan (Dular, Lubšina Tušek 2014, 14, note 8). Dular didn’t mention the second comparison from the Mecklenburg Collection. The two buttons mentioned by Szombathy (zwei Knöpfe) are in reality two parts of the hollow globular pendant. While it is true that grave group 4 from Cvetež B is not published (Dular: unveröffentlicht), neither Teržan nor Dular know that a photo of the decorated iron axe from this grave was published already in 1940 by Kurt Willvonseder (207–208, note 9, Fig. 2).
To the contrary, this axe was well known to prof. Stane Gabrovec, who before 1978 had already informed Hugh Hencken about its existence (Hencken 1978, 21, Grave 21, Chronology; the grave doesn’t date to the Negova, but to the preceding Certosa phase) and later even found out that it had been published in the year 1940 by Willvonseder (Gabrovec 1992, 211, note 38). The socketed axe from find 22 of tumulus 48 of Stična, dated to the Certosa phase, is only one of several proofs that Teržan’s story of the huge central wooden chamber, made in the late 8th century BC as a grave for a leader of the Stična community or even a king with a possible origin from the Etruscan Vetulonia (Gabrovec in Stična II/2, 58), is nothing but a fairy tale and should not be included in a scientific monograph!

 

Three objects from find 22 in tumulus 48 at Stična and the axe from grave Cvetež B/4.

Cf. also Božič 2015.


The division of the Serpentine Fibulae phase
In the end, I would only like to say that Teržan was the first to propose a division of the Serpentine Fibulae phase into subphases 1 and 2 (Stična II/2, 287 ss and Fig. 42 on p. 293). Instead of determining which graves and which types of this phase are typical for each subphase, she made this division on the basis of three male graves from the Certosa phase (33, 76 and 49)!!! I don’t think that any further comment is necessary. I can only repeat: “Don’t use this text if you’re not able to critically evaluate its contents.”


Literature

Božič 2011
D. Božič, Prazgodovinske najdbe s Tonovcovega gradu in železnodobna kultna mesta v Posočju, in: Z. Modrijan, T. Milavec, Poznoantična utrjena naselbina Tonovcov grad pri Kobaridu. Najdbe, Ljubljana 2011, 239–277.

Božič 2015
D. Božič,  Zur Herkunft und Datierung eines singulären Tüllenbeiles
aus der Sammlung Magajna, in: Ch. Gutjahr, G. Tiefengraber (eds.), Beiträge zur Hallstattzeit am Rande der Südostalpen, Akten des 2. Internationalen Symposiums am 10. und 11. Juni 2010 in Wildon (Steiermark/Österreich), Hengist-Studien 3, Rahden/Westf. 2015, 133–147 (in print).

Dular, Lubšina Tušek 2014
J. Dular, M. Lubšina Tušek, Zwei Gräber mit Brandbestattungen aus Ptuj, Arheološki vestnik 65, 2014, 9–33.

Gabrovec 1992
S. Gabrovec, Etruskischer Niederschlag in Slowenien, in: L. Aigner-Foresti (ed.), Etrusker nördlich von Etrurien, Wien 1992, 203–218.

Gleirscher 2011
P. Gleirscher, Die Hügelgräber von Frög, Klagenfurt/Celovec 2011.





Hencken 1978
H. Hencken, The Iron Age Cemetery of Magdalenska gora in Slovenia, Cambridge, MA. 1978.

Stična II/2
S. Gabrovec, B. Teržan, Stična II/2, Gomile starejše železne dobe. Razprave, Ljubljana 2010.

Willvonseder 1940
K. Willvonseder, Ein eisernes Tüllenbeil mit Bronzetauschierung von Hallstatt, Germania 24, 1940, 204–209.


The text was proof read by Emily Zavodny, Pennsylvania State University, USA.