The Center for Archeology of Montenegro started a preventine project in Doclea near Podgorica, one of the most important historical Montenegrin monuments. These projects started due to the archeological excavations happening there, but also after an ancient villa was destroyed while building the railway passing nearby.
During the excavations multiple Illyrian temples were found, speaking of the ancient Illyrian tribe Docleati from whom the city’s name derives. The Docleati are said to have had this territory as their own, and thus built the ancient city. While this was already known, archeologists have claimed that more proofs of the Illyrian presence resurfaced during the excavations.
‘’This area has an obvious antiquity where various ancient cultures are intertwined,’’ said Milos Zivanovich, an archeologist from the Center for Archeology who has made extensive studies on Doclea and its history.
Regarding a natural perspective, Doclea is on a raised hill platform which allows a protection. The city was fortified by a surrounding wall built with stone blocks, from which the excavations have started. The stone walls are able to tell their age which date as back as the fourth century BCE.
‘’The purpose of these excavations is discovering the sight of the city and the discovery of the major urbanistic changes that have happened through various eras in the city of Doclea,’’ said Zivanovich.
The foundation of the city is related to the Roman effort to urbanize the newly established province of Dalmatia in the beginning of the first century CE. Doclea was named after the Illyrian tribe Docleati on which territory it was built. It soon turns into an important trading center and receives the status of municipium during the Flavian Age along with other Dalmatian cities. Romans enforced the city’s protection through mighty two-and-a-half meter thick walls, towers, battlements and fortified bridges across the rivers. It also flourishes as a capital city of the Late Roman province of Praevalitana (third – fifth century CE).
For Doclea has written historian Pliny the Elder from first century CE, and geographer from second century CE, Ptolemy, who have had close contact with this Illyrian civilization heritage. Archeologists have also found other ancient cities in Montenegro which are considered as a huge discovery concerning the existence of the Illyrian Empire in these territories.
To the local team of archeologists were also joined a group from Warsaw, who from 2000 have conducted studies in the city of Risan in Montenegro and that have found ruins of monumental Illyrian buildings and ancient coins. According to the archeologists these are the first findings of the kind in the area of Illyria who might belong to the Illyrian King Ballaios and Queen Teuta of the tribe Ardiaei.
