CONTACTS AND MOBILITY BETWEEN THE CARPATHIAN BASIN AND THE TRIESTE KARST BASED ON MULTIDISCIPLINARY INVESTIGATIONS OF THE LJUBLJANA CULTURE POTTERY

The Deschmann’s pile-dwellings near Ig (Dežmanova kolišča pri Igu), close to Ljubljana, are probably one of the most famous pile-dwellings of the 3rd millennium BC in the Alpine region: the first excavations were carried out in the 1870s and resumed only c. 90 years later in the same and adjacent areas of the Ljubljana Marshes (Ljubljansko barje). The publication of the materials by J. and P. Korošec in 1969 opened the way to various cultural interpretations, the most recent of which is that by E. Leghissa in 2017: according to her the older phase (28th – 26th century BC), is characterised by pottery of the so-called Ljubljansko barje variant of the Vučedol Culture (redefinition of Phase Ig I after Korošec 1959 and of Late Vučedol period-Vučedol C after Dimitrijević 1979), while the younger one (26th century BC to 25th century BC) has been named Ljubljana Culture (redefinition of Phase Ig II of Korošec 1959 and of Alpine variant of the Ljubljana Culture of Dimitrijević 1979 and of Classical Ljubljana Culture of Govedarica 1989). This study stresses numerous similarities of the Slovenian materials with the pottery of contemporary central European cultures, especially of Somogyvár-Vinkovci and Makó-Kosihy-Čaka cultures, but also with the closer Italian Karst, as indicated already before by other scholars. To check hypotheses based on typological comparisons and try to determine the mechanisms of cultural interactions that connected more or less distant regions, destructive – X-ray diffraction and optical microscopy – and non-destructive analyses – Xray computed microtomography and prompt gamma activation analysis – have been carried out thanks to the collaboration of an interdisciplinary international team. The results obtained so far for the pottery materials attributed to the Ljubljana Culture will be presented at the EAA Conference in Budapest.