This mammoth volume, measuring 31 × 24.5cm, and weighing over 3.5kg, represents the first of three promised parts of the final publication of the major excavations conducted between 1997 and 2008 by a joint Croatian and German team at the fortified site of Monkodonja in Istria (Croatia), lying on a low karst hill a few kilometres inland from Rovinj. The site is one of the best preserved, and most easily accessible, of the many gradine or castellieri (hillforts) of the northern Adriatic, dating to the Bronze and Iron Ages—there are more than 300 in Istria alone. The size of the volume is partly accounted for by the fact that the entire text is presented in both Croatian and German, with the concluding chapter also in Italian and English; the many illustrations include numerous high-quality colour photographs, with line drawings in colour and black-and-white interspersed throughout the text, and fold-out plans in a pocket at the end.

The gradina sites, of which Monkodonja is such an outstanding example, have been well known to archaeology since at least the start of the twentieth century, when Carlo Marchesetti produced the first systematic study (Marchesetti Reference Marchesetti1903). His work covered Istria (then part of Italy) and the Caput Adriae, although similar sites occur all along the Dalmatian coast and into Albania. Few had been excavated more than cursorily, and none completely with modern methods. The work presented here thus represents an extremely important outcome for later prehistoric archaeology, and not just in the Adriatic area.

As the title indicates, most of this first volume is concerned with the excavation itself and the structures recovered. Specialist reports cover the botanical remains (Helmut Kroll), isotope analysis of the human remains (Claudia Gerling and Douglas Price), geophysics (Branko Mušić and Igor Medarić) and dating (Bernhard Weninger). We are taken through a description of the landscape of Istria and its gradine, a general description of the site and the excavation, the main fortified enclosure, the ‘acropolis’, the upper and lower towns, and the ‘cult cave’ or shaft that lies 50m to the north-west of the fortification wall. The site is oval, measuring some 250 × 160m at the widest point and enclosing around 3ha; the acropolis or central enclosure measures around 80 × 100m, with walls surviving up to 3m in height. Two gates, at the west and north-west, lead into the interior, with another (unexcavated) to the east; the west gate includes complex walls, presumably designed to hinder access by undesirables. The visitor today sees clean limestone walls (partly reconstructed) and a largely vegetation-free interior, but before excavation, the whole site was covered in dense macchia scrub—anyone who has worked in these environments will understand the difficulties of appreciating the nature and scale of such sites in their overgrown state.

There is little topsoil in such hilltop situations, and, consequently, buildings had their foundations supported by packed rubble, and postholes survive as cuts into the limestone. Only in a few special areas was there any depth of stratigraphy. The cracked limestone table did, however, serve to provide large quantities of easily accessible stone. The walls, comprising the majority of the site's features, are composed of limestone blocks; they are heavily weathered and not how they would have looked in prehistory. These factors all made excavation more difficult than would be the case on the ‘earthy’ hilltop sites to which Northern European archaeologists are more accustomed. Deciding which stones were in situ and which had collapsed was obviously difficult at times. Nevertheless, the team has done an excellent job of deciphering the lines of walls and buildings; the fortification walls in the excavated part were subsequently reconstructed and the postholes marked with timbers. One unfortunate issue was that the owner of the eastern part of the site (a modern wall runs right across the middle) refused permission for excavation until it was too late for much more than geophysical survey. This investigation did, however, determine that the nature of the occupation there was much the same as in the western part of the site. In spite of this, the form of the main construction elements is clear.

Most of the volume consists of a detailed description of the structures recovered. The main fortification wall is shown to have had three phases, the radiocarbon dates for which cover the period c. 1900–1600 cal BC. A timber construction inside the wall is presumed to represent a walkway for defensive purposes; there are also casemate constructions in certain places. Of the gates, that at the west is especially complex and also went through several construction phases, designed to strengthen the defences; that at the north is slightly less complex but still remarkable. The authors compare the complexity of these gateways with those at other sites; the difficulty of extracting clear plans from the piles of weathered limestone is plain to see from the photographs taken before and during the excavation.

Two cist graves were found built into the west gate, giving a long radiocarbon date range; the authors of this section provide a suggested sequence of events, although in truth, the wide date range is not easily explicable. Stable isotope analyses suggest that the deceased came from the local area.

A further interesting element of the main defence wall was the presence of what appears to be chevaux de frise (anti-cavalry defences) on the slope outside the north-western area, but the natural weathering of the limestone could leave some doubt as to whether this was really an intentionally constructed defensive feature. The horse cheekpiece from Ciastiei near Pozzuolo del Friuli is included as possible confirmation that horses were being used for offensive purposes in the area during the second millennium BC (p. 243, fig. 189).

The acropolis, actually a rectangular construction at the highest point of the hill (but only 1–3m higher than the adjacent ‘upper town’), and with two identified gates, also had multiple phases of construction, yet these could not be closely linked to the sequence elsewhere. A series of rectangular houses were identified in the interior, with two major construction phases. Interestingly, the enclosure wall of the acropolis produced a winged axe, jammed into the stones, and a bronze spearhead under fallen blocks of stone near the southern acropolis gate. This is highly suggestive, especially as many slingstones (fig. 94) and bone arrowheads were found in the space outside the acropolis walls. Apart from a single photograph, these artefacts are not presented in this volume. But the implications for attack and defence are clear; the site would appear to represent one of the earliest known Bronze Age examples of a fortified site that underwent an attack.

Between the fortification wall and the acropolis lie what are labelled the upper and lower towns. The former is an almost flat area where the stone has been removed in recent times and heaped into piles so that animals can graze. Only close to the acropolis could buildings be recovered; in this area, a number of splashes of metal were found, suggesting that this zone was intended for craft production. Lower down, the land falls away more steeply and is terraced; one complete house was excavated, with hearth and other installations cut into the bedrock. Here, and in some other places, were found fragments of Brotlaibidole (oggetti enigmatici for Italian researchers)—the so-called ‘loaf-of-bread idols’ that are quite common across Central and Southern Europe in the middle of the second millennium BC, and which represent some kind of symbolic means of communication.

Finally, the project also investigated the shaft or cave, which lies to the north-west, outside the gate. Previous exploration by cavers had shown that it is nearly 30m deep, with two branching chambers towards the bottom. In it were human and animal bones and Bronze Age pottery. Radiocarbon dates on the bone showed that some of these had entered the shaft in the Neolithic; but the Bronze Age material indicates continuing use. The authors suggest that two natural, upstanding limestone blocks a few metres in the direction of the gate represent something akin to horns, as found in the Cretan Bronze Age. This view probably follows on from the overall interpretation of Monkodonja, to which the last chapter of the volume is devoted.

In terms of dating, while the finds will form the subject of a second volume, 45 usable radiocarbon dates were obtained from human and animal bone samples, most from various contexts in the fortifications or settlement area, some from a stone cist and the Mušego tumuli. These are calibrated using CALIB and CalPal, rather than OxCal with which many readers will be more familiar. Figure 318 presents a graphical summary of the dates by context, from which all that can be said is that the main period of occupation falls in the bracket 1720–1540 cal BC, with a later phase centred on 1310 cal BC. Some of the find groups present good inter-sample agreement (for instance, those from sediments beside the fortification wall); others are widely spaced. It seems clear that stray human bones are unlikely to come from the secure contexts that would be expected in the best analyses being conducted today; and what is more, no attempt has been made to model the dates using the now standard Bayesian methods. Perhaps the next volume could include a more detailed analysis of the dates? Resources, we are told, did not permit the acquisition of more dates, which is quite strange given the scale of the enterprise; if samples survive, perhaps they could still be submitted?

In the last chapter, we move on to interpretation. First, an estimate of population size, which is placed around 1000 (range 850–1240), depending on how many inhabitants are allocated per house. Then social structure: here, standard Anglo-American views about elites and chiefdoms are dismissed in a few short sentences; instead, we are told, hypotheses and interpretations will be based “exclusively on the archaeological record from the terrain”, rather than the “arguments of theoretical discussions present in the classic studies of ‘social archaeology’” (pp. 486 & 546); for instance, those of Tim Earle and Colin Renfrew. What the interpretation consists of, in fact, is the idea that there was a tripartite division in society, corresponding to the tripartite nature of the site, with ‘elites’ living in the acropolis, craftworkers in the upper town and the lower classes or slaves in the lower town and outside the fort. This interpretation is clearly speculative and theoretical in nature, no less so than the Anglophone works regarded as unworthy of detailed consideration. Apart from the evidence for craft activities in the upper town, the only specific evidence for differentiation in house form comes from the large size of certain structures in the acropolis, although we also learn from this chapter that murex shells, amber beads, broken bronze axes and plenty of animal bones were found across the site, as well as the Brotlaibidole. The evidence of the cist graves is confusing, but they are regarded here as important elements in the overall reconstruction: the resting places of “outstanding personalities” (pp. 492 & 552) because of their integration into the main gate. As the dates appear to show that they preceded the main phase of fort building, ancestor worship is suggested.

From here we move to wider considerations of the site's importance. Monkodonja is seen as one of four principal sites in the Rovinj region, with a scatter of large and small sites between them. While Monkodonja was probably similar to many other hillforts of Istria, it has been treated as special since the start of the recent excavations, and its southern connections have been emphasised. The authors are at pains to state, however, that they have never called the site—nor three sherds of pottery found in the casemates of the west wall of the acropolis—‘Mycenaean’; but given what they have said in previous publications and lectures, this is quite disingenuous, and neutral observers might have believed the contrary. Here, the argument is that the form of a site such as Monkodonja probably arose from Aegean models; Aegina is cited several times as a parallel, and the authors specifically state: “The constructors from Istria must have learned the special construction techniques on the actual spot in Greece, or else the builders with the necessary knowledge could be the ones who came from the Eastern Mediterranean to Istria” (pp. 501 & 562). This would apply to the creation of special tombs as well, including the Maklavun tomb, described in an earlier publication as a Kuppelgrab (tholos tomb) of Mycenaean type. Some will not find these interpretations to their taste, as they underplay the role of local groups in creating their own social dynamic.

While one can debate these issues, there is no question that this publication represents a milestone in our understanding of second-millennium BC fort-building around the Adriatic. Beautifully produced, and cheap for what it is, my only fear is that the binding of this book will not be strong enough to support its weight with constant use. All congratulations are due to the authors and their team; we await the next two volumes with impatience.