Books by Danijel Džino
Early medieval Hum and Bosnia ca. 450-1200: Beyond myths , 2023
This book explores social transformations which led to the establishment of medieval Hum (future ... more This book explores social transformations which led to the establishment of medieval Hum (future Herzegovina) and Bosnia in the period from ca. 450 to 1200 AD using the available written and material sources. It follows social and political developments in these historical regions from the last centuries of Late Antiquity, through the social collapse of the seventh and eighth centuries, and into their new medieval beginnings in the ninth. Fragmentary and problematic sources from this period were, in the past, often used to justify modern political claims to these contested territories and incorporate them into the ‘national biographies’ of the Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), or to support the ‘Yugoslavizing’ and other ideological discourses.
The book goes beyond ideological and national mythologemes of the past in order to provide a new historical narrative that brings more light to this region placed on the frontiers of both the medieval West and the Byzantine empire. It provides a new views of the period between ca. 450 and 1200 for the parts of Western Balkans and Eastern Adriatic, brings the most recent local historical and archaeological research to the Anglophone readership, and contributes to the scholarship of the late antique and early medieval Mediterranean with study of very poorly known area.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 Setting the stage
2 (A long overdue) essay on historiography and archaeology of late antique and early medieval Hum and Bosnia
3 The Prelude: Making of imperial society
4 ‘Long’ Sixth century (ca. 450-630)
5 The Dark Age Interlude (ca. 630-800)
6 "The Force Awakens": The Ninth Century
7 The Lords of Hum
8 "Good ol’ days of ban Kulin": The birth of Bosnia
https://www.routledge.com/Early-Medieval-Hum-and-Bosnia-ca-450-1200-Beyond-Myths/Dzino/p/book/9781032047928
Liburnians and Illyrian Lembs: Iron Age Ships of the Eastern Adriatic explores the origins of two... more Liburnians and Illyrian Lembs: Iron Age Ships of the Eastern Adriatic explores the origins of two types of ancient ship which appear in the written sources connected with the protohistoric eastern Adriatic area: the ‘Liburnian’ (liburna or liburnica) and the southern Adriatic (Illyrian) ‘lemb’. The relative abundance of written sources suggests that both ships played significant roles in ancient times, especially the Liburnian, which became the main type of light warship in early Roman imperial fleets and ultimately evolved into a generic name for warships in the Roman Imperial period and Late Antiquity. The book provides an extensive overview of written, iconographic and archaeological evidence on eastern Adriatic shipbuilding traditions before the Roman conquest in the late first century BC / early first century AD, questioning the existing scholarly assumption that the liburna and lemb were closely related, or even that they represent two sub-types of the same ship. The analysis shows that identification of the Liburnian liburna and Illyrian lemb as more or less the same ship originates from the stereotypical and essentially wrong assumption in older scholarship that the prehistoric indigenous population of the eastern Adriatic shared the same culture and, roughly, the same identities. The main point made in the book is that two different terms, liburna and lemb, were used in the sources depicting these as two different kinds of ship, rather than being interchangeable terms depicting the same ship type.
Late antique identities from the Western Balkans were transformed into new, Slavic identities aft... more Late antique identities from the Western Balkans were transformed into new, Slavic identities after c. 600 AD. It was a process that is still having continuous impact on the discursive constructions of ethnic and regional identities in the area. Building on the new ways of reading and studying available sources from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the book explores the appearance of the Croats in early medieval Dalmatia (the southern parts of modern-day Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina). The appearance of the early medieval Croat identity is seen as a part of the wider process of identity-transformations in post-Roman Europe, the ultimate result of the identity-negotiation between the descendants of the late antique population and the immigrant groups.
Illyricum in Roman Politics 229 BC - AD 68
Illyricum, in the western Balkan peninsula, was a strategically important area of the Roman Empir... more Illyricum, in the western Balkan peninsula, was a strategically important area of the Roman Empire where the process of Roman imperialism began early and lasted for several centuries. Dzino here examines Roman political conduct in Illyricum; the development of Illyricum in Roman political discourse; and the beginning of the process that would integrate Illyricum into the Roman Empire and wider networks of the Mediterranean world. In addition, he also explores the different narrative histories, from the Romanocentric narrative of power and Roman military conquest, which dominate the available sources, to other, earlier scholarly interpretations of events.
Edited books by Danijel Džino
This volume brings together papers focused on the issues of dissidence and persecutions in early ... more This volume brings together papers focused on the issues of dissidence and persecutions in early and middle Byzantine period-from Constantine to late eleventh century. They explore a variety of problems on the imperial centre and periphery such as: the Byzantine and Jewish relations, the iconoclastic dispute, papal-imperial relations and frictions, loyalty and dissidence on the imperial periphery, etc. The aim of the volume is to explore different perspectives of dissent and persecution, the reasons driving dissent and causing persecutions, as well as their perceptions and depictions in the Byzantine literature"-Provided by publisher.
ECEE collection Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carol... more ECEE collection Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carolingian Empire off ers insights into the Carolingian southeastern frontier-zone from historical, art-historical and archaeological perspectives. Chapters in this volume discuss the significance of the early medieval period for scholarly and public discourses in the Western Balkans and Central Europe, and the transfer of knowledge between local scholarship and macro-narratives of Mediterranean and Western history. Other essays explore the ways local communities around the Adriatic (Istria, Dalmatia, Dalmatian hinterland, southern Pannonia) established and maintained social networks and integrated foreign cultural templates into their existing cultural habitus.
This book is a collection of papers which are the result of a conference on Power and Emotions in... more This book is a collection of papers which are the result of a conference on Power and Emotions in Antiquity, which was held at the University of Adelaide in December 2008, on the occasion of the retirement of Dr. Ron Newbold. The main aim of this collection is to explore the issues of power and emotions and their relationships with the ancient world, using written sources such as personal letters, speeches, philosophical or historical writings. The book explores different aspects in which power and emotions co-existed in the Roman Imperial and Late Antique world, in the time span stretching from the High Empire of Marcus Aurelius to the post-Roman world of Gregory of Tours and the Frankish kings.
The papers in this book explore topics such as: self-addressing in the works of the emperor Marcus Aurelius; the struggle for control in the writings of St. Jerome; the consequences of the riot of the statues in 4th century Antioch; the place of rage as a virtue in the literature of the fourth century; insult and rage in the work of the historian Ammianus Marcellinus; love and grief in the letters of the Austrasian Frankish queen Brunhild; and the more global problems of power relations and identity transformations occurring in the world of late antiquity.
Book chapters by Danijel Džino
in F. Milivojević, V. Sarakinski & J. Tzvetkova (eds.) The Unclassical Balkans: Ancient Societies and Cultures of the Balkan Peninsula beside the Graeco-Roman World. Živa antika monographs 11 [Faculty of Philosophy: Skopje, 2025], pp. 649-666., 2025
Two stone panels with images of Silvanus and a female deity -
usually recognised as an indigenous... more Two stone panels with images of Silvanus and a female deity -
usually recognised as an indigenous interpretation of Diana - were discovered by chance in what seems to be an original context, together with a pot, an inscription and two coins. Unfortunately, some panels of the original assemblage, such as the inscription and one of the coins, did not make it to the museum in Sarajevo and are forever lost for scholarship. Earlier scholarship focused exclusively on the typology of the images and their place in the cult of the Dalmatian Silvanus. However, this discovery in a dear indigenous context still provides a unique opportunity to get an insight into some theoretical aspects of indigenous spiritual life in early Roman Dalmatia, which will be explored in this paper. This, in particular, refers to the issues of ritual, indigenous literacy and knowledge of Latin, the adaptation of Mediterranean and Roman imperial religious templates, the function and meaning of artifacts and assemblages in religious worship, etc.
This paper aims to re-examine available evidence for the late antique and medieval settlement com... more This paper aims to re-examine available evidence for the late antique and medieval settlement complex and burial site located in Mogorjelo near the modern town of Čapljina in Herzegovina (ancient Turres?), focusing on its function in Late Antiquity. While insufficient publication and the unavailability of Carl Patsch’s excavation records limit the extent of interpretation somewhat, recent methodological advances in the research of Dalmatian Late Antiquity and the publication of material from Mogorjelo provide an opportunity to re-assess and re-examine the available evidence. This paper certainly cannot provide all the answers to this complex problem, but can at least chart some directions for future research.
M. Ančić, J. Shepard and T. Vedriš (eds) Imperial Spheres and the Adriatic Byzantium, the Carolingians and the Treaty of Aachen (812), 2018
This chapter will discuss the problems of social collapse and regeneration in post-Roman Dalmatia... more This chapter will discuss the problems of social collapse and regeneration in post-Roman Dalmatia. As there have been different definitions and different cognitive maps of Dalmatia throughout history, it is important to state straight away that in this chapter 'Dalmatia' corresponds to the territory of late antique Roman Dalmatia, stretching between the southernmost part of the Pannonian plain and the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. 1 In Late Antiquity this region did not include modern Montenegro and southwestern Serbia, which were part of the province of Praevalitana. The purpose of this chapter is not so much to provide definite answers to the many questions about the 'Dark Ages' in Dalmatia, but rather to observe the region in this period through evidence indicating social collapse and regeneration. Also, this cannot but be a brief survey of this complex problem, which sorely needs concerted and detailed analysis from different scholarly perspectives. The term 'collapse' can be defined differently according to context. When applied to human society, it implies social transformation characterized by rapid decentralization and the simplification of social networks and organization, accompanied by cultural and political change. 2 Collapse is never an apocalyptic end of civilization. On the contrary, all those societies which have experienced collapse have maintained varying degrees of continuity with the past. 3 The collapse and recovery of Dalmatia cannot be observed in isolation from the transformation of the Roman world in Late Antiquity and should be viewed within the framework of imperial dynamics in the province. It was undoubtedly a functional part of the imperial system before the seventh-century contraction of the Byzantine empire in southeastern Europe. After then, as this chapter will argue, post-Roman Dalmatia shows the characteristics of an imperial frontier society, where the imperial powers intervened only sporadically and indirectly. It is now well established that the political and cultural fluidity of imperial frontiers tells us much more about empires-and their expansions and contractions-than does research focused on their centres and the few key players within those centres. 4 World-system analysis can also help clarify Dalmatia's peculiar position. It shifted from being part of a world-system in Late Antiquity to becoming a contact periphery, with low-scale contact between core and periphery, in the seventh and eighth centuries, before integrating into a new, early medieval European world-system in the ninth. 5
The geography of Eastern Europe provides excellent conditions for increased connectivity and popu... more The geography of Eastern Europe provides excellent conditions for increased connectivity and population movements, and it is not at all surprising that the distant past of the region was signi cantly a ected by migrations. Migratory movements are attested in prehistory (e.g., the Urn elders), protohistory (e.g., La Tène/Celtic population movements) and Late Antiquity (Huns, Goths, etc.), so medieval migrations should not be seen as an exception, but rather as a continuation of a historical pattern. They impacted the ethnic con guration and the political architecture, but also triggered deeper changes of cultural and social patterns, especially if the local population for this or that reason adopted certain material cultures or models of social organization brought by the migrants. However, in comparison with earlier migrations, medieval migrations were assigned much more importance in modern historiography, largely because they are (much like in Western or Northern Europe) often incorporated into "national biographies" of modern nations during the building of national discourses in the 19th and 20th centuries. That is why they remain sensitive topics of discussion. The reconciliation of written and archaeological sources concerning medieval migrations represents particular and recurring problems. Most migrations are known from written sources, and due to the privileged treatment of written sources in the early days of archaeology, archaeologists tended to t their nds into narratives based on the written sources. Changes in material culture were interpreted as evidence of migrations by groups that were supposedly maintaining clearly de ned ethnic identities. This led to a remarkable resistance of the culture-historical paradigm in core traditions of medieval archaeologies in Eastern European countries. 2 However, migrations in the written sources are not always exact descriptions of real events and re ect narratives of particular social groups (i.e., the elite migration myth known as origo gentis), which justify their privileged position. They can also be narratives coming from imperial centers of power fashioned in order to justify particular political claims or discourses on cultural supremacy. Finally, these migration myths could also be narratives of migrant integration into the Christian and post-Roman world, as recently pointed out by Walter Pohl. 3 While a dose of healthy skepticism is necessary when dealing with medieval migrations in this part of the world, it is also very important not to "throw out the baby with the bathwater" and reject migrations solely on the principle that there are too many problems with
This paper analyses the available evidence for habitation of the ancient Dalmatian capital Salona... more This paper analyses the available evidence for habitation of the ancient Dalmatian capital Salona during the seventh and eighth centuries. The existing scholarship, with few exceptions, accepts that Salona was taken by the Slavs and Avars before mid-seventh century, probably within the decades of 620s or 630s. However, the lack of archaeological evidence proving the destruction of the city creates space for arguments that the city did not meet a violent end, but rather that it slowly died out, as argued in the works of Rapanić, Goldstein, Budak and the present author. The paper argues that Salona did not meet a violent end in seventh century, but that some kind of habitation existed until eighth century. One plausible possibility could be that some traumatic event happened in eighth century, ending continuity of life within the city-walls.
M. A. Janković & V. D. Mihajlović (eds.), The Reflections on Roman Imperialism, 370-377, 2018
I. Drnić (ed.), Od ruba Imperija do provincijskog središta / Segestica and Siscia. From the periphery of the Empire to a provincial center (Zagreb: Archaeological Museum in Zagreb, 2018), , 2018
in D. Dzino, A. Milošević & Trpimir Vedriš (eds.), Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carolingian Empire. East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (450-1450) 50 (Brill Academic publishers: Leiden & Boston), pp. 17-31., 2018
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Books by Danijel Džino
The book goes beyond ideological and national mythologemes of the past in order to provide a new historical narrative that brings more light to this region placed on the frontiers of both the medieval West and the Byzantine empire. It provides a new views of the period between ca. 450 and 1200 for the parts of Western Balkans and Eastern Adriatic, brings the most recent local historical and archaeological research to the Anglophone readership, and contributes to the scholarship of the late antique and early medieval Mediterranean with study of very poorly known area.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 Setting the stage
2 (A long overdue) essay on historiography and archaeology of late antique and early medieval Hum and Bosnia
3 The Prelude: Making of imperial society
4 ‘Long’ Sixth century (ca. 450-630)
5 The Dark Age Interlude (ca. 630-800)
6 "The Force Awakens": The Ninth Century
7 The Lords of Hum
8 "Good ol’ days of ban Kulin": The birth of Bosnia
https://www.routledge.com/Early-Medieval-Hum-and-Bosnia-ca-450-1200-Beyond-Myths/Dzino/p/book/9781032047928
Edited books by Danijel Džino
The papers in this book explore topics such as: self-addressing in the works of the emperor Marcus Aurelius; the struggle for control in the writings of St. Jerome; the consequences of the riot of the statues in 4th century Antioch; the place of rage as a virtue in the literature of the fourth century; insult and rage in the work of the historian Ammianus Marcellinus; love and grief in the letters of the Austrasian Frankish queen Brunhild; and the more global problems of power relations and identity transformations occurring in the world of late antiquity.
Book chapters by Danijel Džino
usually recognised as an indigenous interpretation of Diana - were discovered by chance in what seems to be an original context, together with a pot, an inscription and two coins. Unfortunately, some panels of the original assemblage, such as the inscription and one of the coins, did not make it to the museum in Sarajevo and are forever lost for scholarship. Earlier scholarship focused exclusively on the typology of the images and their place in the cult of the Dalmatian Silvanus. However, this discovery in a dear indigenous context still provides a unique opportunity to get an insight into some theoretical aspects of indigenous spiritual life in early Roman Dalmatia, which will be explored in this paper. This, in particular, refers to the issues of ritual, indigenous literacy and knowledge of Latin, the adaptation of Mediterranean and Roman imperial religious templates, the function and meaning of artifacts and assemblages in religious worship, etc.