Vlashnjë (definite Albanian: ''Vlashnja'') is a village in the Prizren municipality of

Kosovo Kosovo, officially the Republic of Kosovo, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe with International recognition of Kosovo, partial diplomatic recognition. It is bordered by Albania to the southwest, Montenegro to the west, Serbia to the ...

. It has 1,700 inhabitants as of 2011. Vlashnjë is a multi-layered settlement and site area. Archaeological excavations have identified habitation and use of the area since the Neolithic era. The rock art paintings at Mrrizi i Kobajës (late Neolithic-early Bronze Age) are the first find of prehistoric rock art in Kosovo. In late antiquity, Vlashnja was a fortified settlement part of the fortification network which

Justinian I Justinian I (, ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 527 to 565. His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovatio imperii'', or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was ...

rebuilt along the White Drin in Dardania.

History

The settlement of Vlashnjë is located on the flat

plateau In geology and physical geography, a plateau (; ; : plateaus or plateaux), also called a high plain or a tableland, is an area of a highland consisting of flat terrain that is raised sharply above the surrounding area on at least one side. ...

of a raised rocky terrace above sea level, on the Pristina-Zhur road about west of Prizren. The toponym itself may refer to a nearby locality which was used at some point as grazing land by pastoral Vlachs. The site contains material from a number of periods, from the early Starčevo (early Neolithic) and Vinča cultures through the Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages to the

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

Late Antiquity Late antiquity marks the period that comes after the end of classical antiquity and stretches into the onset of the Early Middle Ages. Late antiquity as a period was popularized by Peter Brown (historian), Peter Brown in 1971, and this periodiza ...

and the

Early Middle Ages The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages (historiography), Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th to the 10th century. They marked the start o ...

. Archaeological evidence excavated at the site include clay pottery and vessel fragments, stone and bone tools, decorative and utilitarian artifacts and coins. They are comparable to material found at the nearby Prizren Fortress (~10 km to the east of Vlashnjë). Excavations took place in 2002, 2006-2008 and 2010 as part of a joint archaeological project of the universities of Tirana and Pristina. They covered a total area of 816 m². In the 2005 expedition, archaeologist Edi Shukriu discovered a series of rock paintings at the location Mrrizi i Kobajës (1.5 km to the west of the present-day location of the village) on a hill which overlooks the Lumbardhi river. The open rock art has been painted on limestone with red paint - a mixture of animal blood and wax or ochre. Its dating is unclear as Vlashnja has many sites from different eras, but it is broadly specified between the late Neolithic (ca. 3600 BCE) and the early Bronze Age (ca. 2000 BCE) in the Balkans. There are two roof and two horizontal (wall) paintings. The roof paintings depict ten spirals of clockwise and counterclockwise direction. The wall paintings depict spirals, of which some have faded, and a deer. The open rock art of Vlashnja is the first find of prehistoric rock art to be found in the region. The spirals symbolize the sun and the cycle of life and death and the location was a ritual site. The spiral is found in later depictions in the region of Kosovo, in Neolithic pottery and Iron Age jewelry. In Dardania, the spiral as a symbol of a sun deity developed in the local sun cult of Dea Dardanica by the Roman era. The deer as a symbol is depicted in other sites of rock art in the western Balkans like Tren in the Korça region in Albania and Lipci rock art in the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro, albeit in a different context - as hunted by male horse-riding spearmen. It also appears as part of later Illyrian art in the region. During Late Antiquity, the settlement was fortified with walls typical of the reconstruction of forts in the era of eastern Roman Emperor

as part of the defensive fortifications along the White Drin in late Dardania. The late antiquity fortifications are comparable to the material found in excavations at the site of the Prizren fortress and other settlements of the Prizren area (Karashëngjegj, Korishë, Vraniq). The fortified area, covering about , was probably used to observe the Via Lissus-Naissus (which bypassed the settlement). Archaeological finds indicate that it developed at the same site as an earlier non-fortified settlement in the 3rd to 2nd century BCE in the period of the Kingdom of Dardania. Pottery fragments painted with geometric lines, a Starčevo flint knife, and anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines from the sixth millennium BC have been unearthed. A decorated baked-clay pot typical of the Vinča culture (third millennium BC), Bronze Age baked-clay table vessels and a 3.72-gram coin dating to 55 BC have also been found at the site. To the north of the site stand the ruins of a medieval church. The patron saint of the church was St. Nicholas after whom to this day the locality is named (''Shën Koll'').

Demographics

The population of Vlashnjë is Albanian. In the 2011 census, 1,698 of the 1,700 villagers were Albanians.

References

Sources

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Vlashnje Villages in Prizren Illyrian Kosovo Cities in ancient Illyria Archaeology of Illyria Starčevo–Körös–Criș culture