Aims of the Lofkënd Project

The ancient tumulus of Lofkënd lies in the general area of the Mallakastra hills, which rise to the southeast of the modern regional center of Fier, near the modern village of Lofkënd (sometimes Lafkënd), which is at an altitude of some 318 meters above sea level. The tumulus, which creates a significant shape dominating the local landscape, and which can be viewed from fairly substantial distances, is located in one of the richest archaeological areas of Albania. The site is ringed by several of the most significant fortified Proto-Urban centers – such as Margëlliç to the west-northwest, Gurëzeze and Mashkjezë to the west, Byllis and Klos-Nikaia to the south, Dimal to the northeast – and more-or-less due east of the ancient Corinthian colony of Apollonia. Important prehistoric sites in this very region include the Bronze and Iron Age tumulus at Patos excavated by Professor Korkuti some 14 km to the northwest, the open air site and tumulus of the Bronze Age at Drenovë, and the Neolithic settlement at Cakran (excavated by Korkuti and Andrea), which is especially important for the Middle Neolithic period.

The exploration of a major site in this region predating both the foundation of the colonies and the Proto-Urban centers will lead to a better understanding of the historical processes that contributed to the rise of urbanism in Illyria. The implications for the nature of settlement in this region may be more far-reaching and they may even contribute to a clearer understanding of the transition from unwalled “villages” (komai), which are characteristic of an ethnos in classical sources (according to Ps.-Scylax, Thucydides), to fortified “cities,” and to what extent these “cities” relied on, or differed from, the Hellenic model. It is clear that in two Molossian (Late Bronze and Early Iron Age) cemeteries in Epirus in northwest Greece, at Vitsa and at Liatovouni – the latter in part a tumulus burial – unwalled “villages” to which the cemeteries belonged have been excavated, while the Korçë-Kolonjë region of southeastern Albania in the Late Bronze Age, and especially the Early Iron Age, saw new settlements created on naturally defended hilltops, fortified with walls. The questions to be asked include: What brought about these changes? How did tumuli function in relationship to a settlement, or group of settlements, and what was their contemporary significance in the greater landscape? What were the patterns of settlement and/or partial mobility in the era before cities? And what can we learn about the city outside the historical contours of the classical polis?

A further focus of this project is to explore mortuary customs in south-central Albania not only from a regional and contextual approach, incorporating the results of excavations at other nearby and more distant tumulus- and other cemeteries, but from a theoretical and methodological approach that is cognizant of the latest developments in demographic studies. Issues of age, gender, pathology, kinship traits (the latter using DNA analysis), as well as the rituals and philosophy of death, issues of ethnicity, and social organization (the latter not limited to the establishment of “social status,” but the inclusion or exclusion of certain groups on the basis of age, gender, deviancy, etc.) are central to our research and interpretation.

In terms of excavation techniques, the project aims for total recovery of all the archaeological material, not only artifacts, but of all surviving plant remains, bones and other organic material, with a view of contributing to a better understanding of the environmental and ecological history of the region. A particular focus of this project will be the full and detailed analysis of all the skeletal remains, whether inhumed or cremated, and comparison to other excavated populations in Albania. This will allow for more robust results on the demography and human population in this region of Albania.