Recent rescue excavations in Albania

At the end of 1999 a new Rescue Archaeology Unit was set up in Albania, funded by the Packard Humanities Institute. Its activity during 2000 has been intense, and focused on four main projects, always in co-operation with the Institute of Archaeology of Tirana.

After introducing a new method in Albania of recording field data (with a series of pre-printed recording sheets to be used in the field, and a site manual where recording and field procedures are explained), and the set up of contemporary standards of documentation presented and discussed in a seminar the Unit began its fieldwork with a typical rescue project at Rrogozhina, about 65 km south of Tirana (Figure 1, right).

Here two hypogeous tombs were found, damaged during the excavation by heavy machinery during gravel extraction for the construction of a new road called the 'Eighth Corridor' which will connect the port of Durres with Macedonia, Greece, and Turkey. One of the tombs (the second one has been almost completely destroyed) is composed of a corridor-shaped antechamber and a funerary chamber, divided by a single doorway in limestone with doorposts and threshold.

The monument is cut in the bedrock and the sides of the cut are covered by brick walls built in the opus testaceum technique (Figure 2, left). The few finds (the tomb was robbed in antiquity) can be dated between the 4th and the first decade of the 6th centuries A.D. Anthropological study of the bones confirmed the long use of the monument, and identified 22 individuals, forming a homogeneous group of rural population typical of late antiquity.

The Via Egnatia project is a long-term and multifacetted investigation involving bibliographical research, surveys and excavations. Following a desk-top study, the Unit was involved in a survey between Bradashesh and Qukës (respectively the mutatio Ad Quintum and the mutatio Tres Tabernas of the ancient Itineraries (Miller 1916: 516-18; Cuntz 1929: 329, 608) (see Figure 1); preserved stretches of the ancient road have been documented, and the state of preservation of monuments connected to the Via Egnatia and the new highway which is going to be built along it has been checked. In a third phase, an excavation was carried out at the bridge of Topçias (close to Elbasan) (see Figure 1). This is a crucial monument for the understanding of the history of Via Egnatia. The results were promising: the long and impressive bridge was always thought to have been built all at the same time, and later restored in various parts. Instead it was discovered that it had three phases of construction (in the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman periods), which has helped to define the structural history of other bridges on the ancient road (Figure 3, below).

Another rescue and research project is focused on the large tumulus burial of Kamenica (close to Korça) (see Figure 1). This cemetery was damaged in 1997, and since then looters have dug systematically, even using a bulldozer on occasions, as well as locating artefacts with a metal detector. To date one-third of the tomb has been excavated, providing a lot of information about the architecture of the monument, as well as its burial customs. As regards the architecture, the tumulus has a diameter of more than 40 m, and an approximate height at the centre more than 3 m; it also has a distinctive feature: a thick layer of medium and large size stones used as filling only in its southern half.

As regards burial customs, inhumation was the dominant way of disposing the dead; however cremation was not rare. Single inhumation is the most common burial practice, but there are also cases with two individuals in the same grave. Grave goods are common: ceramic pots, bronze jewellery and accessories, and iron arms and weapons. They can be dated from the Early Iron Age (early 10th century B.C.) to the 6th century B.C. (Figure 4, left).

Finally the Unit is involved in the Maliq project, the most important and well-known prehistoric site in Albania (close to Korça) (see Figure 1), excavated from the early 1960s to the mid 1980s (Prendi 1960; 1982). This is a rather untypical rescue project that does not involve fieldwork, but office work with the goal of rescuing archaeological data and information (digitizing plates, pictures, plans and other field documentation, and organizing them in an electronic archive).