ISBN: Ostalo
Godina izdanja: 2006
Autor: Domaći
Jezik: Engleski

Knjiga je dobro očuvana,na engleskom jeziku.
NATIONAL MUSEUM,2006447 STRANA,ILUSTR.28CM
"Exhibition - the magic of amber, National Museum
The Balkan route of amber
`From the Paleolithic to today, amber is used exclusively for beautiful and good things, for jewelry and for magical and medicinal purposes - of all the works I have read about amber, I have never found any of its dark properties,` says Dr. Aleksandar Palavestra, one of the authors of the current exhibitions in the National Museum


Rectangular tile with a representation of horsemen from Berane, 6th-5th century BC, Polimski Museum, Berane
The National Museum in Belgrade marked its day, May 10, with the `Magic of Amber` exhibition. This is the first time that the beauty of amber objects and jewelry found in our area has been shown and explored in its entirety. The exhibition was preceded by the Fifth International Conference on Amber in Archeology in which scientists from 18 countries participated, from the Baltic, Balkans, Central Europe to the USA and China. A monograph will also be published these days Magic amber.

One of the authors of the exhibition and monograph, Vera Krstić, senior curator of the National Museum, says that many objects and jewelry made of amber have been found in our area. `Only in the most famous archaeological site of amber, Novopazar, 5264 spherical perforated beads were found. Of course, we have not presented all of them now. We showed between four and five thousand objects, I don`t know the exact number, because there are often more than one catalog number. We have presented all our finds, which means that in addition to exhibits from the National Museum, the exhibition also includes amber from the Museum of the City of Belgrade, Požarevac, Sremska Mitrovica, Loznica, Čačak, Kraljevo, Užice, Novi Pazar, Novi Sad, Šabac, Vršac, Pristina, Budva, Beran and from the Faculty of Mining and Geology and the Museum of Yugoslavia.`


Acorn-shaped bead, Novi Pazar, 6th-5th century BC, National Museum in Belgrade
WONDERFUL THE STORY: The story of exposed amber is miraculous. It comes from the Baltic, from the area where the most famous amber in the world was created some 60.000.000 years ago. Dr. Aleksandar Palavestra, professor at the Department of Archeology of the Faculty of Philosophy, also the author of the exhibition and monograph, says that `the forests there, from the trees of which resin fossilized through various geological processes and thus created amber, were several meters below the level of today`s Baltic Sea. The waves separated pieces of earth with amber and threw them ashore, people would find them there, and make jewelry from that wonderful petrified resin. It was back in prehistoric times, in the Paleolithic.` Amber was perceived in the same way then, says Professor Palavestra, as it is today. `It is attractive, it is transparent, it has that specific beautiful color that varies from light yellow to dark red, sometimes decorated at one time with trapped leaves and insects - all this attracted people.` They also noticed its electrostatic property, which was inexplicable both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, they attributed healing properties to it, and because of all that they considered it magical. From the Paleolithic to today, amber is used exclusively for beautiful and good things, for jewelry and for magical and medicinal purposes, but always good - of all the works I have read about amber, I have never found any of its dark properties.`


Female figure, Novi Pazar, VI-V century BC, National Museum in Belgrade
In the middle of the second millennium before our era, in the Bronze Age, there was a connection between Northern Europe and the Mediterranean, so suddenly, objects made of amber appeared in today`s France, Hungary, the Balkans, and especially on the Adriatic. `At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, archaeologists assumed that amber was found in Mycenaean graves from the Baltic, and today it has been confirmed. Amber is an indicator of contacts between peoples, so it means that, to use an archaeological metaphor, it reached Europe in the Bronze Age through one of the routes of amber,` explains Dr. Palavestra. `At that time, it was also found in Serbia, it was found in the vicinity of Belotić, in Bela Crkva, near Loznica, it is found in Istria, in the vicinity of Zadar and, exceptionally, in Italy around the Po River, where there were probably amber processing centers. It is likely that the Greeks experienced the place as a source of amber because it is mentioned in the myth of Phaethon, the son of Helios, who endangered the world because, in modern terms, he wanted to ride in his father`s car even though he did not know how to drive it. To save him, Zeus knocked down Phaethon, he fell into the river Po, and his Heliad sisters wept so much that Zeus turned them into poplars and their tears into amber.`

MOVING: Later, in the older Iron Age, as Dr. Palavestra says, in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, on the way to the Mediterranean, amber stayed a lot on our soil. It was found in the so-called Duke`s graves and in Atenica near Čačak, Pilatovići near Požega, and in the richest site under the church of St. Peter near Novi Pazar, then near Beran, in Pećka Banja near Peć - we only mention the main locations. `At that time, amber reached southern Italy, in Basilicata, Campania, Armento, Potenza, and was processed there. The forms are a reflection of Greek-archaic art. Jewelry sets were imported to us from there. Large tiles were found in Novi Pazar, there are no such tiles anywhere in the world, which were probably part of some headdress, complicated jewelry that hung around the head. When the site was excavated at the end of the fifties, large parts of those tiles were discovered, but it was not known what was on them because they were not complete. Beside them, dozens of small pieces were found, which we put together like a puzzle and thus reconstructed the tiles. We were helped by Aleksandar Krylov, one of the artists who reconstructed the famous amber room of Peter the Great,` said Dr. Palavestra.


Sarmatian necklace of amber and semi-precious stones, III-IV century, City Museum in Vršac
There is a little less amber from the younger Iron Age, and at the end of the 1st millennium BC, the amber trade in Europe declines. Roman expansion restores the amber roads, they reach the Germans and even the Baltic nations. `That amber was very popular in Rome is known from Pliny`s writings, in which he comments that an amber figurine is worth as much as a human being - a slave.` Then again, one of the centers of amber processing was Aquileia, the place where, according to myth, Phaeton fell. At that time, of course, amber was also found in today`s Serbia, that is, in Roman Moesia and Pannonia - beautiful specimens were found in Sirmium, Singidunum, Budva, Viminacium, on Kosmai, where the Roman mining center was. During the migration period, the Goths, the people of the north, combined amber with glass beads. Beautiful necklaces in this style were found in Vojvodina. At the end of the early Middle Ages, the trade in amber almost disappeared, amber retreated to the north, but almost never reached these parts. Only a few isolated beads from the early Middle Ages were found, from Novi Brdo - which is very strange, because we didn`t have amber at that time,` says our interlocutor.

Vera Kostić and Aleksandar Palavestra started working on this exhibition ten years ago, but political events interrupted their work. Now, to the original intention to hold an exhibition and publish a monograph, an International meeting has been added. Its foreign participants have never been able to see such a large amount of representative exhibits of amber from this area in one place. The Novopazar tiles will certainly attract the attention of the audience, and we assume the large ring from Viminacium with two tiny ivory playing dice in the center (Dr. Palavestra assumes that there was a third because of the stronger connection between them), as well as the Roman-era phallus pierced at nine places probably because of some magical rituals."