Internationalisation as a Long-Term Strategic Project of the Post-War Renewal of the Yugoslav Archaeology (1950–1971)

Abstract

Archaeology in the countries which belonged to Yugoslavia (1918–1991) was mosaic of different traditions. The development of archaeology was greatly affected by political changes in the last 150 years; all of them required significant re-contextualisation of the discipline and its practice. The renewal of archaeology after the Second World War, in the context of Socialist Yugoslavia, acted on both levels, in building-up the existing national (republican) archaeological disciplinary frameworks, and in forging ‘new’ common Yugoslav archaeology. Key role in this process played the Archaeological Society of Yugoslavia, established in 1950 as the principal coordinating scholarly organisation in the country. The Society’s immediate task was to create conditions for the cooperation of all archaeologists in the country, including the international promotion of the (new) Yugoslav archaeology. Despite having less than 100 archaeologists in the 1950s, the Society designed very ambitious program of ‘internationalisation’ (e.g. exchange of publications, participation at the international conferences, grants, invitation to foreign scholars, special publications published exclusively in foreign languages etc.) which proved highly successful in a very short time. The peak of these endeavours was participation at the 1st International Congress of Slavic Archaeology in Warsaw (1965) and organisation of the 8th Congress of the UISPP in Belgrade (1971); the event which could not be organised without intensive promotion and networking of the Yugoslav archaeologists in the international academic arena in the 1950s and 1960s.