Department of Archaeology, University of Ljubljana
History
The first beginnings of the Department of Archaeology date in 1923 when the Archaeological seminar was introduced. The first generations of the study was mainly focused on classical archaeology, numizmatics, Roman and Greek archaeology. After the year 1947 the seminar was upgraded with reorganising the study into an independent department of Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. From that year the study field of prehistorical and Old Slavic Archaeology was introduced as a part of the programme.
Along with the Archaeological seminar the founding fond of the Department of Archaeology Library, University of Ljubljana was established. The library's fond currently has around 26.000 units of study and reference material in the field of Archaeology.
Today
Throughout the years the Department shifted its focus from historical positivism and cultural-historical context to more broad archaeological cultural contexts, from palaeoenvironmental studies, landscape and settlement archaeology to archaeological theory and methodology Currently the department has eight chairs: Archaeology of Paleolithic and Mesolithic, Archaeology of Neolithic and Eneolithic, Archaeology of the Metal Period, Chair for Classical Archaeology, Archaeology of the Early Middle Ages, Archaeology of the Early Periods, Chair for Archaeological Methodology and Theory.
The scholars of the Department are organising the regular Neolithic Seminars for world researches active in the field of Neolithisation of Eurasia. This year the 17th Seminar on Eurasian Neolithics will be focused on Perspectives from Culture, Population and Climate. The Department is publishing the yearly journal Documenta Praehistorica with abstracts from the articles available online and in English. The journal Archaeologia Historica Slovenica is publishing articles in Slovenian, English, Italian and German. The content of each number of the journal is available online.
The Department is active in the international cooperation, mainly as a part of the SOCRATES/ERASMUS student exchange network with co-operating departments from at the universities of Beijing, Berlin, Edinburgh, Leiden, Newcastle upon Tyne, Oxford, Pisa and Thessaloniki. It is also included in the European COST G2 research network was active in the sixth framework programme of the European Community for research technological development and demonstration (RTD) activities.
The recent breaking discovery resulted from an archaeological excavation in the Istra region in the North Adriatic, where the remains of the urban settlement and the necropolis dating from the Bronze Age (1800 – 1200 B. C.) were found. The reasearch was conducted on the initiative of professor Biba Teržan, archaeologist and an academian at the Department of the Archeology together with partners from Croatia, the Folk Museum from Rovinj and Istra Archaeological Museum from Pula.