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Iron Age Stories from the CrossroadsExceptional archaeological finds from Slovenia
22. 12. 2017

Iron Age Stories from the Crossroads

Epochal changes in the first millennium BC radically marked both the territory of Slovenia and the wider European arena. At the beginning of this period, state social forms were limited to the eastern outskirts of the Mediterranean, where they also attained great technological and artistic advances. This is the time into which the Iron Age Stories from the Crossroads, the latest part of the permanent exhibition at the National Museum of Slovenia, take us.

The exceptional archaeological material from Slovenia presents the setting, alongside which most of these phenomena – from the demanding metallurgical technologies and complex artistic figurality, through to the autochthonous beginnings of the monetary economy and the development of local scripts – were introduced to and developed spontaneously on the territory of Slovenia.

Photography: Uroš Acman

The famous situla from Vače near Litija belongs to one of the most beautiful products of situla art due to the high-quality production of the scenes and its excellent state of preservation. It is decorated with three bands – friezes, filled with human and animal figures. The scenes, which are read as a series of events, are interpreted as a narrative about the important deeds and events from the life of a personage from the Iron Age.