Ricerca e tutela in un territorio di frontiera. L‘Epiro del Nord fra età ellenistica e presenza di Roma

The northernmost part of ancient Epirus, present days Southern Albania, was inhabited in ancient times by one of the three Epirotic tribes, the Chaonians. Today this area is crossed by the national border line between Albania and Greece, but being a border area is a recurring phenomenon through all its history. A border between central Greece in the south and barbarians Illyrians tribes in the north; a border between the hinterland and the sea, between the regions inhabited by Molossians and Macedonians and the western Ionian and Adriatic coasts. This is one of the main reasons why Epirus became since the IV century a privileged meeting and exchange place with the Italic and Roman people. The conquest of the city of Phoinike—the capital of Chaonians—by the Illyrians who threatened the trades of Italian businessmen (mercatores italici) provided a casus belli for the Romans, who crossed the Adriatic and started the conquest of the Balkan peninsula and Greece. The activities of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Phoinike—and since 2015 also in Butrint—have systematically investigated all areas and chronological phases, aimed at providing a rich archaeological documentation able to fill the voids and help reconstruct the history of the town and its territory. Many issues still remain, but the careful work of Italian and Albanian archaeologists gives us today the possibility to delineate an accurate picture of the late Classical, Hellenistic, Roman and late Antique town of Phoinike, up to the Ottoman conquest. The results has been widened to peri-urban and regional scale, with detailed bibliographical researches, surface surveys and focused excavation of peripheral sites, in order to provide a solid context of the data collected in Phoinike itself. We should always remember that the city—even if easier to identify and document—is only one of the multiple elements of ancient landscape, a rather delimited one, in both time and space. To better comprehend complex phenomena, like the birth and development of urban centres and the many-sided relations with the Greek, Italic and Roman worlds, a regional scale of analysis is a fundamental prerequisite.