Novensia: Studia i Materiały (21.2010)

Jovan J. Martinović

SOME REMARKS ON EPIGRAPHIC AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL
RESEARCH IN THE MONTENEGRIN LITTORAL

Abstract: The article reports on the history of documentation and preservation of archaeological
finds from Montenegro with special emphasis on epigraphic monuments.
Key words: Montenegro, archaeological collections, epigraphic collections, Risan/Risinium,
Budva/Butua, Rotor, Ulcinj/Olcinium
Archaeological research started in the Rotor Bay (Boka Rotorska), as in the entire Mon-
tenegrin littoral, in the second half of the 20th century with the hiring of the first educated
archaeologists to work in local museums. Results were modest due to a chronię lack of
funds. Therefore, most archaeological artifacts in museums and collections, illustrating
comprehensively the history of the country, came from chance finds madę during building
construction and agricultural works.
Antiąue Latin inscriptions were first reported from the Montenegrin littoral by the 15th-
century Italian traveler Cyriacus of Ancona.1 These and other texts, mentioned in the letters
of different collectors and associates of Theodorus Mommsen, were included in the third
volume of his monumental Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL). In the Rotor Bay area
foundations were laid for a local collection of antiąue inscriptions by the clergyman
Andrija Zmajević from Perast (1624-1694),2 later archbishop of Bar and primate of Serbia.
This humanist, theologian and historical writer, as well as folklore collector, removed seve-
ral Greek and Latin inscriptions from Risan and had them incorporated into the walls of
his baroąue pałace in Perast as well as other buildings, churches and palaces. Many in-
scriptions and architectural elements were also built into the walls of houses and monas-
teries in the town of Rotor.
Regular studies of antiąuities were taken up at the end of the 19th and the first half of
the 20th century. Local historians and professors from the Grammar School in Rotor: Josip
Gelcich, Simeon Rutar and Mladen Crnogorćević, produced studies of the country’s rich
and turbulent history. Pavo Butorac and Ivo Stjepćević later also wrote about local antiąuities.

1 Ciriaci Anconitani Itinerarium, Florence 1742.
2 See Enciklopedija Jugoslavije 8, Zagreb 1971,
p. 628 — “Zmajević Andrija” [N. MartinoyićJ;

Dizionario biografico degli uomini illustri della
Dalmazia, Vienna 1856, p. 320 — “Zmajevich An-
drea” [S. Gliubich (Ś. Ljubić)].