Josef Szombathy

The article presents the activity of Josef Szombathy (1853−1943), Viennese prehistorian and anthropologist, in the regions of Notranjska (Inner Carniola) and Primorska (Slovenian Littoral). Between 1879 and 1911 he organized and participated in extensive archaeological excavations in the Križna jama cave near Lož, in the village of Šmihel pod Nanosom, in the village of Most na Soči (called Sveta Lucija at the time), in the village of Idrija pri Bači, and in the caves Mušja jama and Okostna jama near Škocjan; these excavations have greatly broadened our knowledge of the oldest periods in this part of Slovenia. He regularly presented his findings at the meetings of the Anthropological Society and wrote two compelling papers on the necropolis in Idrija pri Bači and on the transregional cult sites in Škocjan, which have preserved their scientifi c value to this day.

The way to reconstruct three important Hallstatt helmet graves from Vače: archives, the German language, and logic

The finds from Hallstatt period graves in Dolenjska, which came in the 1880s to the Regional Museum of Carniola in Ljubljana and the Natural History Court Museum in Vienna, were mostly still inventoried typologically without data on the grave group itself. This is why researchers, who based their knowledge only on the data in the inventory books, didn’t know the accompanying finds of the objects they were dealing with.
In the case of exceptional graves, like those with a bronze helmet or a bronze vessel, archival documents (letters, lists, diaries, drawings etc.) and sometimes even printed reports enable a reconstruction, at least partially, of the grave group.

At the Hallstatt cemeteries near Vače, in the years 1881/1882, 1887, and 1889, three graves with a double-crested helmet were discovered. In the paper of Stane Gabrovec on the Hallstatt helmets of the south-eastern Alpine region (Arheološki vestnik 13–14, 1962–1963) and in the book of Markus Egg (Italische Helme, 1986), only the grave group of the first one of these three graves is quoted and not even in its entirety.
The first grave was discovered on August 11, 1881, during excavations paid by Ferdinand von Hochstetter, the president of the Prehistoric Commission in Vienna, and directed by the museum preparator Ferdinand Schulz from Ljubljana. Near the relatively well preserved skeleton of a young man were found two iron spearheads, an iron socketed axe, an unornamented rectangular belt plate, a small hollow bone cylinder, and a spindle whorl. To the same skeleton belonged the famous Vače situla and a fragmented hollow spiral bracelet of bronze sheet, found about 7 months later by a peasant boy from Klenik near Vače Janez Grilc.
The second grave was unearthed for the museum in Vienna on  December 7, 1887, by France Peruci, the schoolteacher of Vače. It contained a skeleton of a warrior and a skeleton of a horse without a skull. Near the first skeleton lay the bronze helmet, an iron socketed axe, a leather strap, a well-preserved hollow spiral bracelet, two bronze, and two ceramic vessels. Peruci found near the horse’s skeleton an iron bit and four bronze strap-dividers. When Ignacij Hribar, the owner of the field, heard about the rich finds, he chased the teacher away and continued to excavate by himself. About 2 m from the horse’s skeleton he found its skull together with two spearheads, a badly preserved bronze rectangular belt plate, several iron rings, and an iron bell similar to Scythian bronze bells. Biba Teržan, who still prepares the publication of the finds from Vače kept in Vienna, has wrongly assigned the objects found later by Hribar to a separate grave.
The third grave was discovered on August 22, 1889, by excavator Jernej Pečnik. It contained a skeleton and, beside it, a bronze helmet, rectangular belt plate decorated with two rabbits and four birds, two rectangular belt attachments, two Certosa fibulae of type XIII after Teržan, two iron spearheads with mountings of bronze sheet, an iron socketed axe, an iron knife, an iron mace, and two red pottery vessels. The finds came to the Ljubljana Regional Museum.
All three graves with a double-crested helmet from Vače can reliably be dated to the later part of the Certosa phase!

The text was proof-read by Emily Zavodny from Penn State University (USA).

Ljubljana, April 28, 2015

Three double-crested helmets were discovered in the Hallstatt period cemeteries around Vače. All three were lying in rich warrior graves. The first of these, discovered in August 1881, also contained the Vače Situla, found later. The excavator Jernej Pečnik succeeded in finding the third grave in August 1889.
In this paper we present the second grave. It was found by France Peruci, a teacher from Vače, on December 7, 1887.
The reconstruction of the find circumstances and the grave group is enabled by numerous written sources. Near the skel¬eton, in addition to the helmet, an iron socketed axe, a leather strap, two bronze, and two pottery vessels were found. A hollow bronze bracelet was found on one arm. Next to the skeleton there was a horse skeleton without a skull, on which an iron Scythian bit and four bronze strap-distributors were found. When Ignacij Hribar, the owner of the field, learned about the rich finds, he chased Peruci away and continued to excavate by himself. One fathom from the horse skeleton its skull was found along with two iron spearheads, a bronze belt plate, an iron knife, four iron rings with a loop and an iron bell, similar to the Scythian ones.
All three graves from Vače with a double-crested helmet can be dated to the later part of the Certosa phase.

The central wooden grave chamber of barrow 48 from Stična, which would according to Biba Teržan measure no less than 8 x 5.5 x 3.5 m, is an invention. It was dated by Stane Gabrovec and Teržan to the late 8th century BC and assigned to a warrior, who came to Stična from Vetulonia in Tuscany. The bronze horse gear was in no case imported from Vetulonia. The footed red and black vases from finds 20 and 21 can’t be dated earlier than to the Stična 2 phase! The iron socketed axe, decorated with zigzag bronze bands, differs a lot from the axe from Frög in Carinthia (barrow K) and has only two good comparisons, in the Mecklenburg Collection and at Vače, both dated to the Certosa phase.

Three hoards of tools and weapons from the Iron Age and the Roman period, discovered in the 19th century. Critical reading of the literature, evaluation of the sources and the reconstruction of the contents
A public test lecture for the election in the title Associate professor for the field of archaeology
http://iza.zrc-sazu.si/Si/Splet_publ/Dragan_zakladi.html

V zadnjih štirih stoletjih pred našim štetjem so se v Posočju spojile tri kulture: domača posoška kultura starejše železne dobe, ki jo najbolje poznamo na podlagi velikega grobišča in naselja na Mostu na Soči, italska kultura z Apeninskega polotoka in keltska iz srednje Evrope. Pestre najdbe iz tistega časa so odkrili zlasti na grobiščih, od katerih je najpomembnejše na Idriji pri Bači, in v svetiščih, na primer nad Kobaridom in na Šentviški planoti.
Izstopajo predmeti z venetskimi in italskimi napisi, srebrne pletene ovratnice, za Posočje značilne fibule z živalsko glavico, raznovrstne bronaste posode, konjska in konjeniška oprema in železno poljedelsko orodje (na primer kose, lemeži, črtala in koničaste kopače), najdeno v grobovih in zakladih.