Nakovana Cave: an Illyrian ritual site. (News & Notes).

Forenbaher, Staso ; Kaiser, Timothy

Nakovana Cave overlooks the Adriatic Sea from just below the crest of a high ridge near the strategically important western tip of the Peljesac peninsula, some 100 km north of Dubrovnik on Croatia's Dalmatian coast. A test trench, excavated at the mouth of the cave, yielded evidence of regular visits to the site at least since Early Neolithic times. The cave's cultural deposits are over 3 m thick; they continue down to an as yet undetermined depth and time.

During our excavation season in 1999, we discovered that a spacious, 45-m long cave channel comprising two chambers continued beyond what was presumed to be the end of a relatively deep abri. Its low entrance was sealed by natural accumulation of cave deposits and by intentionally piled-up limestone rocks.

Beyond the blocked entrance, the first chamber was found to contain a very dense surface scatter of Hellenistic potsherds, concentrated around a single large stalagmite. The highly structured character of the evidence and the unusually high quality of the finds alerted us to the possibility that this part of the site may have been used for ritual purposes. Significantly, we found no evidence of disturbance by human visitors post-dating the 1st century BC.

A full-scale excavation, carried out in the summer of 2000, exposed an area of 34 sq.m around the stalagmite. Out of some 8000 potsherds recovered, 73% are from fine Hellenistic ceramic vessels, over a hundred of which are fully reconstructible. They include a number of imports from Greece, Gnathia wares from the Greek possessions in southern Italy, as well as their copies that, like the later `Liburnian' wares, were probably produced more locally, in Greek colonies within Dalmatia. Several special vessels, known from classical writings to have been fashioned expressly for use in offerings, were also recovered. A small number of vessels bear short votive graffiti, scratched in either Greek or Latin.

Most of the vessels are related to drinking and food serving (cups, jugs, plates). Together with faunal remains that point to the preferred consumption of the best cuts of lamb and kid, this suggests ritual feasting. A number of amphorae fragments were recovered, but their spatial distribution differs from those of fineware sherds, reflecting the fact that they were not treated as offerings. They were used, presumably, to bring wine or some other liquid to the cave, and were casually discarded.

All of the imported ceramics were produced between the late 4th and the early 1st centuries BC. There were at least several episodes of deposition, extending over a period of some 250 years. Almost invariably, vessels were placed in a very tight cluster immediately in front of a large, isolated stalagmite. This stalagmite is located on a break in the slope of the cave floor, near the distant end of the chamber, its phallic shape set against the dark background of the channel that continues into the mountain. It was clearly the focus of ritual activity, and may be interpreted as an image symbolizing the divine protector of the shrine, with obvious iconographic associations of masculine fertility, potency and other traditional male-related qualities such as warrior strength and prowess.

Judging by the typology and relative frequency of finds, ritual activities began soon after the establishment of Greek colonies on the neighbouring Dalmatian islands, intensified during the 3rd century BC, and were discontinued with the final establishment of Roman authority in the area. Throughout that period, the Peljesac peninsula was under the control of the local Illyrians. A massive hill-fort, located only 1 km from the cave, and numerous burial cairns which surround it, provide ample evidence of their presence. Hellenistic sherds closely resembling those from the cave have been collected from the hillfort and from some of the cairns, indicating that Illyrian elites had access to imported ceramics either through trade or piracy. This does not come as a surprise, since the primary longitudinal and transversal sea-lanes of the Eastern Adriatic pass through the channels directly below the hill-fort and converge 8 km to the west, at the tip of the peninsula.

The exceptional preservation of the Nakovana cave shrine provides a rare opportunity for the study of prehistoric ritual and religion. Since the Illyrians produced no written accounts of themselves, we are left with the incomplete and biased writings of their enemies, the Greeks and the Romans. Nakovana offers a unique insider's view of the Illyrian spiritual world during the dynamic final centuries of their incorporation into the Mediterranean world-system.

[FIGURES 1-3 OMTTED]

Staso Forenbaher & Timothy Kaiser, Forenbaher, Institute for Anthropological Research, Amruseva 8, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia. [email protected] Kaiser, Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen's Park, Toronto MSS 2C6, Canada. [email protected]