Via Egnatia

Меѓу мноштвото населби кои егзистирале во Преспанскито регион во минатото, една се издвојува по својот донекаде легендарен статус-римската населба или егнатиска патна станица Скиртијана (Scirtiana), популарно перцепирана како претходник на градот Ресен. Овој труд има задача да го сублимира, анализира и прошири досегашното знаење за Скиртијана, сѐ со цел актуализирање на можноста за нејзино точно географско лоцирање и археолошко истражување. Преку комбинирање на можните географски траси на Via Egnatia со описите на античките итинерариуми, се предлага заклучок според кој Скиртијана би требало да се бара во географскиот простор на преспанските села Козјак и Сопотско. Натаму во текстот следи освртот кон археолошките пронајдоци од овој простор кои можат да се поврзат со Скиртијана, а посебно внимание е посветено на еден вотивен релјеф од Козјак на кој е претставен богот Дионис.

Παρατηρητήριο Χωρικών Επιδράσεων της Εγνατίας Οδού ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙΟΣ ΦΟΥΡΚΑΣ, ΖΩΗ ΠΑΠΑΣΙΩΠΗ Περίληψη Στην παρούσα εργασία παρουσιάζεται η προσπάθεια της Εγνατία Οδός Α.Ε. για την ανάπτυξη µηχανισµού παρατήρησης των χωρικών επιδράσεων που προκαλούνται από την Εγνατία Οδό και τους κάθετους σε αυτή νέους οδικούς άξονες. Αντικείµενο του Παρατηρητήριου της Εγνατίας Οδού είναι η, µε τεκµηριωµένες επιστηµονικές µεθόδους, συγκέντρωση και επεξεργασία δεδοµένων και ο υπολογισµός δεικτών µε τους οποίους παρακολουθούνται διαχρονικά οι επιδράσεις των έργων στην κοινωνική και οικονοµική συνοχή, στη χωροταξική οργάνωση, στο σύστηµα µεταφορών, και στο περιβάλλον της Βόρειας Ελλάδας και του ευρύτερου χώρου της Νότιο-Ανατολικής Ευρώπης. Η εργασία καταρχήν παρέχει µια συνοπτική επισκόπηση του γενικού επιστηµονικού πλαισίου και των πολιτικών της ΕΕ, καθώς και της διεθνούς εµπειρίας σε ζητήµατα που αφορούν στη συστηµατική παρακολούθηση και αποτίµηση της αλληλεπίδρασης µεταξύ µεταφορικών υποδοµών και χωρικής ανάπτυξης. Στη συνέχεια, παρουσιάζεται αναλυτικά το Παρατηρητήριο της Εγνατίας Οδού και περιγράφονται: (α) η ίδρυση και το πρόγραµµα δράσης του, (β) η οργάνωση, η υποδοµή και η παραγωγική λειτουργία, (γ) το σύστηµα δεικτών, (δ) οι δραστηριότητες προβολής-διάχυσης και δικτύωσης, και (ε) τα βασικά σηµεία απολογισµού και διανοιγόµενων προοπτικών. Η εργασία καταλήγει συνοψίζοντας τα γενικότερα κρίσιµα ζητήµατα, και εντοπίζει τα ιδιαίτερα χαρακτηριστικά του Παρατηρητηρίου της Εγνατίας Οδού που το καθιστούν καινοτόµο και χρήσιµο εργαλείο πληροφόρησης, υποστήριξης αποφάσεων και χάραξης πολιτικής στην υπηρεσία, όχι µόνο της διοίκησης της Εταιρίας, άλλα και όλων των Περιφερειακών και Εθνικών αρχών και φορέων που ασχολούνται µε τον προγραµµατισµό και τον αναπτυξιακό σχεδιασµό.

The paper presents two archaeological finds from the Prespa region with a possible connection to the "Gnostic" ideas of antiquity.
The first find is a bronze ring from the site Pločite near the village of Nakolec on the eastern shore of the Prespa Lake. The ring bears the inscription "ΑΒΡΑ / СΑΞ", leading us to the mythological being Abrasax from Gnostic tradition.
The other artifact is a small glass handle found on the floor of an Early Christian basilica on the island of Golem Grad. The glass handle is shaped as an Ouroboros - a dragon eating its own tail, one of the most common symbols in Gnosticism.
Then, in an attempt to understand and reconstruct the possible communication route(s) through which Gnostic ideas might have reached the Prespa region, the paper explores the archaeological evidence of Gnosticism and other "oriental" cults on the territory of the Roman province of Macedonia in correlation to major roads and settlements. The Via Egnatia and the eastward towns around the Thessalonica port are suggested as the most probable communication channel through which Gnostic ideas might have reached the Prespa region.
At the end, the paper asks several questions for future research and discussion, ranging from whether the already existing local religious traditions represented a good environment for welcoming Gnostic ideas, to whether the possible existence of Gnostic teachings in antiquity contributed to the strong Bogomil presence in the region during the Middle Ages.

01 Cf. dans ce volume la p. 372. 02 M. Bats, Vaisselle et alimentation à Olbia en Provence (vers 350-v.50 av. J.-C.) modèles culturels et catégories de céramiques, RAN Sup. 18, CNRS, Paris, 1988. 03 C. de Mitri, Ceramica da cucina di produzione albanese (illyrian coooking ware) nel Salanto Romano (Puglia-Italia) : presenza e distribuzione, dans LRCW 3, Cooking Wares and Amphorae in the Mediterranean. Archaeology and archaeometry. Comparaison between western end eastern Mediterranean, ed.

Le campagne di scavo che si sono susseguite ad Egnazia dal 2007 al 2015, nell'ambito del Progetto Egnazia: dallo scavo alla valorizzazione' 1 si sono rivolte a comparti mai prima indagati e a settori della città già scavati a partire dal 2006, con approfondimenti e interventi che si sono rivelati particolarmente efficaci per la conoscenza della sequenza insediativa della città ormai evidente, con riscontri sempre più puntuali, nell'ampia superficie indagata ( ). L'attività di ricerca ha peraltro

One of the cities of Macedonia listed by Claudius Ptolemaeus (Geogr. III, 12, 23) and Pliny the Younger (NH. V, 10, 17) in the imperial age is Lete. Its location is about 12 kilometers NW of Thessaloniki. The city and its cemeteries sprawled over the hills of the Derveni pass and the western part of the fertile plain of Langadas. This strategic position on two main roads - leading from the Aegean into the central Balkans and linking the Thermaikos Gulf with eastern Macedonia - justifies the long, continuous habitation of the site, from the very early Neolithic period until the Roman era.The key factor in the city’s economic development in the Roman age was its position on the Via Egnatia, the great Roman road running from the Adriatic Sea through northern Greece to the Bosporus.Throughout its history Lete controlled an extensive agricultural territorium, from which it derived much of its wealth. As research has repeatedly shown, cities cannot flourish without a substantial agricultural surplus to supply their markets.  Roman citizens and freedmen, seem to have begun settling in and around the city before the end of the republic era, and, adopting Greek as their language, to have set up banks and commercial activities and acquired land.

Contemporary issues regarding European road planning, heritage management and local landscape development are discussed by
examining the significance of the Egnatian arterial route in Macedonian Greece as a landscape-historical phenomenon. The study investigates how past roads in present landscapes express specific socio-cultural modes of travel.

Ottoman military conquests in the Balkan were followed by three separate routes. These were: left of the route (Via Egnatia), mid-route (Via Militaris) and right route (Crimean-Black Sea trade route). The march-lords who moved their central bases to the close the border by the progress of the conquests, followed the ancient strategic roads which were constructed during the Roman period and later also used by the Byzantine Empire. As a leading figure and one of the most important raiders in the Balkan conquests Evrenos Beg, advanced from these routes on the Via Egnatia and made a major contribution to the development of the Balkan borders of the Ottoman Empire.
Evrenos Beg who made a breakthrough military success, was maintained the conquests of Thrace and Macedonia and later he provided the expansion of the Ottoman borders up to the Albania. In this paper we will focus on the strategy of Evrenos Beg during his conquests in the Balkans. We will emphasize the importance of his center of marchs and why he chose them. And will be discussed how the geography of the cities affected the conquests of the Balkans. Also with the examples from the sources will be discussed if the conquests occurred at random or by the orders which came from the centre.

This article attempts through the reading of the two Itinerarium of the imperial period, the Itinerarium Antonini Augusti  and the Itinerarium Burdigalense , the case of the identification of settlements mentioned in the Itinerarium, with archaeological findings in the area of Aegean Thrace, literary sources and knowledgeable locations.

When St Paul and his companions Silas, Timothy and Luke, disembarked at the busy port of Neapolis the year was 49 or 50 AD, and the area had been a Roman province since 167 BC and the consolidation of Roman power in the Antigonid kingdom of Macedonia. St Paul’s crossing from Asia to Europe and his travels across Roman Greece changed forever the local society, culture and the urban landscape in which that society lived and died. This lecture explores the changing face of St Paul’s Balkan stops from the fourth through the seventh century, a period of profound political, administrative, economic and religious changes. The rise of Philippi and Amphipolis as major pilgrimage destinations, Thessaloniki’s urban continuity and architectural splendor, and the dwindling fortunes of the old and established cities of Athens and Corinth, are some of the subjects which will be discussed in the light of written sources, topographical analysis and the latest archaeological discoveries.

In the beginning, humans had a tongue (gjuhën, Shqip). Then, they could or couldn’t let go of the tongue (len…gjuhën, Shqip). Albanian natural tongue (Shqip) implies the use of the tongue in the mouth for
articulating (shqiptoj, Shqip) words. The eternity of Shqip (Speech) is in its words that are wordy clauses, phrases, parts of or short sentences. The Speech (Shqip) and other lan…guages (len…gjuhët, Shqip) carry these kinds of wordy clauses to prove the permanency of Shqip.
    The Speech (Shqip) had local and schooled forms in distant antiquity. Therefore, various types of writing appear now. Since the schooled style was in general use and carried later in the papers and books of lan…guages (len…gjuhëve, Shqip), it has been preserved unchanged. Its pieces, no matter how small are, every time get easily read and quickly understood using contemporary Shqip.
    The Speech (Shqip) was the first stratum in the Euro-Mediterranean area. It was the Speech (Shqip) of Nephilims (Nëfillimëve). The Shqip of today can be used to read and understand both words in other idioms and ancient writings.

When St. Paul fi rst set foot on the European continent, he travelled along the routes of the ancient province of Macedonia. The cities which he chose as his missionary destinations were not accidental. In fact, almost all of them were located along the Roman military route called Via Egnatia, which was laid down to allow for the smooth redeployment of troops through the harsh mountainous stretches of Macedonia. Although the Apostle’s journey along Via Egnatia was passed over in silence by the author of the Acts, it does not mean that the said road did not play an important role during Paul’s missionary journeys. Thanks to historical, archaeological and literary reconstruction, we can now prove that, although Via Egnatia was not of great importance for Paul’s missionary strategy, it signifi cantly contributed to the expansion of Christianity and the development of the Early Church.

The massacre that followed the murder of Roger de Flor at Adrianople (30 April 1305) left his band of mercenaries largely decimated. The Companyia, however, managed to bounce back and started to exact its notorious “Catalan vengeance” on the Byzantine Empire. The Felix Francorum exercitus in Romani(a)e partibus com(m)orans, as known officially from that time on, proved highly resilient and stayed in Thrace for two years, living off the land and wreaking havoc. Around the middle of 1307 the so-called Catalan Company moved westwards and settled in Kassandra, Chalkidike; being stationed there for another two years, it continued its marauding activities, targeting Mount Athos as well. In 1309 the Company was driven to Thessaly by a combination of factors and in the next spring it entered the service of Gautier V de Brienne, Duke of Athens. This led to a sequence of events culminating on 15 March 1311 in the Battle of Halmyros (or Kephissos), where the Catalans emerged victorious.
The focus of this essay is to trace the available numismatic evidence that can be potentially associated to the impact of the Catalan wanderings in the span of about five years (May 1305 – spring 1310). Highlighting probable cases of emergency coin hoards can be revealing for the state of monetary affairs in relation with major routes, or less important ones, used both for military and commercial purposes. The testimony of literary sources is also taken into account in order to obtain a more comprehensive picture. Essentially, this is an attempt to showcase, within an already existing route network, an intriguing case study of how a Late Medieval army caused sums of money to be moved along for its needs or diffused away because of its presence.

Giakoumis K. (2015), “Contesting the Sacred in Space: Saint John Vladimir and the Westernmost Dominions of Tsar Samuel”, in Gjuzelev V. – Nikolov G.N. (eds.) (2015), South-Eastern Europe in the Second Half of the 10th – the Beginning of the 11th Centuries: History & Culture. International Conference Proceedings, Sofia, 6-8 October 2014, Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, pp. 607-630.

This paper traces the contestation over the sacred in the westernmost dominions of Tsar Samuel. Their territory extended from the region of Dioclea (zone corresponding with a medieval state from Kotor and the Bojana (Buna) River in the West to the sources of Zeta and Morača rivers in the East), to the South and South-East, to Ohrid Lake in the South [Map 1]. Considering the significant ethno-cultural diversity of this territory, the westernmost dominions of Tsar Samuel were entrusted to John Vladimir by way of intermarriage with Samuel’s daughter Kosara (Chapter 36 of the Annales of the Priest of Dioclea). The challenges were profound: whoever wanted to sustainably control this territory had to identify such bonds as to keep together heterogeneous peoples with volatile and resilient interests.  In this paper I am arguing that, across times, in the veneration and pilgrimage of St. John Vladimir, every ambitious ruler or state longing to sustainably control this territory found a powerful cohesive element of the sort which they utilized or even manipulated to their benefit.

In the 12th century, a Byzantine statio was built by the Via Egnatia east of Kavala, close to the border of Thrace, near the village of Petropigi. It was a square structure, 100x100 Roman feet, with corner towers. In the Ottoman period, it was turned into a caravanserai (han/hana) for caravans, with a praying platform and open-air fireplaces. After it was ababdoned, villagers moved inside the walls and finally herdsmen used it as a pen.

This paper presents the effort of Egnatia Odos A.E. Company to develop a mechanism for monitoring the spatial impacts of the Egnatia motorway and its vertical axes. The scope of the Observatory is to collect and process data in a scientifically documented way, and calculate indicators that monitor the impacts over time on the social, economic and territorial cohesion, on the spatial structure, on the transportation system, and on the environment of N. Greece and the greater area of SE Europe. The paper comprises a summary review of the general scientific framework and policies of the EU, as well as of the international experience in the systematic monitoring and assessment of the interaction between transportation infrastructures and spatial development. Then the Egnatia Observatory is presented in detail and the following are described: (a) its establishment and action plan, (b) its organization, infrastructure, and productive operation, (c) the system of indicators, (d) the diffus...