TWO COLLECTIONS AND TWO GREEK OBSESSIONS

Abstract

It has become a truism that museum exhibitions and interpretations are influenced by wider theoretical concepts and the author’s personal ideas. Winckelmann’s legacy is present in most of the European museums. Sometimes the concepts emphasizing Greece are perpetuated over decades, in spite of the fact that new archaeological interpretations contradict this neo-Classicist reading. Two examples will be offered to illustrate this situation. The first is the case of the Neolithic site of Vinča near Belgrade, excavated during several campaigns from 1908 to 1934 by Miloje Vasić. At the time he started researching the site, Vasić was the director of the National Museum in Belgrade and a professor of archaeology at the university. He argued that Vinča was a settlement of the Aegean colonists and an emanation of the Minoan and Mycenaean Bronze Age spirit. From 1934 on, he even identified Vinča as an Ionian colony from the sixth century B.C.E. After the First World War, Vasić ceased being the director of the museum and focused on the work at the university. At the same time, his Vinča interpretation was met with sharp criticism both in the Serbian and international archaeological communities and the site was firmly dated as Neolithic. Faced with criticism, even from the National Museum Belgrade, in 1929 Vasić established the University Archaeological Collection, where he placed material from the post-war excavations at Vinča and continued exhibiting his philhellenic interpretation. The second case to be presented is what is referred to as the princely grave from Novi Pazar, one of the most Iron Age important finds in the Central Balkans. From the middle of the twentieth century almost to the present day, a thesis concerning the Greek-Illyrian treasures has been perpetuated, although the new interpretations have clearly shown that both parts of this title are problematic.

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