Page 13 - Herojska doba Histrov

Herojska doba Histrov

It has been over a decade since the launch of The Histri in Istria project and the first major
thematic exhibition about the Histri at Pula’s Sacred Hearts Museum and Gallery. Enough time
for the story of the Histri, their culture and customs, to cross the Croatian border of the Istrian
peninsula on which they lived and to which they gave their name. Following its first international
presentation at the »J. J. Winckelmann« Antiquities Museum in Trieste, this exhibition continued
in Skopje at the Archaeological Museum of the Republic of North Macedonia, and then to Sara-
jevo, at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Finally, the exhibition was welcomed
in an adapted form at the University of Primorska, Faculty of Humanities.

This exhibition best reflects the trade in goods and ideas that existed between the Histri and
the prehistoric peoples of the Adriatic basin and the whole of the Balkan Peninsula, a kind of
mutual reflection of cultures; our surest route to their discovery is by mutual comparison and
connection. With the title The Heroic Age of the Histri this exhibition continues its journey among
the museums of the European southeast. The select artefacts presented at this exhibition are
covered in the remarkable bilingual monograph before you, The Heroic Age of the Histri, opening
a window into the world of the people who inhabited Istria in the final millennium of the ancient
era, the oldest people known to us to have inhabited the peninsula.

I wish to extend my gratitude to all out partners—Slovenian and Croatian—who made this major
museum and exhibition project possible. I also wish to thank the employees of the University of
Primorska and the Faculty of Humanities and of the Archaeological Museum of Istria for their
exceptional efforts in bringing this exhibition to fruition. My particular gratitude goes to the au-
thor of the exhibition, Martina Blečić Kavur of University of Primorska in Koper, who has picked
up the torch left to us by our late and esteemed colleague Kristina Mihovilić, the preeminent
authority on the topic of the Histri.

We dedicate this exhibition to Kristina, without whom our present understanding of the Histri
would be modest indeed.

Darko Komšo
Director, Archaeological Museum of Istria

The Heroic Age of The Histri
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