macedon - Excavations at Ulanci

Excavations at Ulanci

Tuesday, 18. March 2008, 00:24:39

by William Neidinger and Eulah Matthews

In 1994 TFAHR undertook joint excavations near the village of Ulanci with a team from the Museum of Macedonia. Ulanci is a small agricultural village 18 km. south of Veles on the banks of the Vardar River (ancient Axios River). The Vardar/Axios was the central artery of ancient Macedonia, but prior to Macedonian hegemony over the region, the area was occupied by numerous tribes which ancient authors referred to collectively as the "Paeonians." Among modern scholars there is a consensus that the Paeonians spoke an Indo-European language...

Archaeological evidence suggests that the Paeonians moved into the Vardar valley in the early Bronze Age. Homer mentions the Paeonians as inhab¬iting the Axios River valley and being allies of the Trojans. Herodotos and Thucydides refer to the Paeonians as occupying the area between the Axios and the Strymon valleys, as far north as the modern cities Skopje and Sofia, and extending to the Aegean in the south. This area of Paeonian settlement was considerably reduced by the Persian invasion of the 6th century BC, when some tribes were decimated, some eliminated, and some forcibly relocated to Asia Minor.

This depopulation of Paeonian territory result¬ed in two circumstances: first, it created an opportu¬nity for the neighboring Macedonians to settle the lower Vardar basin; and second, it forced the remain¬ing Paeonian tribes to form a tighter confederation for their survival. As the Macedonians expanded their territory up the Vardar River, the Paeonians were forced further north. After initial conflicts between Paeonians and Macedonians, the Paeonians became allies of the Macedonians and served as contingents ih Alexander the Great's army.
With the collapse of Alexander's kingdom the Paeonians briefly regained their independence; however, the Paeonian state suf¬fered near-fatal damage with the invasion of the Gauls (?) in 279 BC, and lived in an almost constant state of conflict with their Macedonian neighbors. Both Macedonian and Paeonian independence was ended when the Romans conquered the region in the 2nd century BC, and subsequently added these lands to their empire as the provinces of Macedonia and Upper Moesia.

Excavations in the south Vardar basin began with German military excavations in 1917. Almost no work was conducted in this area until just after World War II when Greek archaeologists began excavating in the area of the Vardar valley which fell to the Kingdom of Greece, and Yugoslavian archaeologists began work in the area which fell to the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. To this day Greek archaeolo¬gists have continued their excavations of the lower Vardar valley, and in 1977 Yugoslavian (later, Macedonian) archaeologists began a systematic sur¬vey of the region north of Gevgelija. As a result of the Macedonian survey, numerous sites have been identified and a number of excavations have taken place. One of the sites identified by this survey was Ulanci.