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On the eastern slope of Slog Hill in Ravna, some 400 m to the west of the Roman fortification of Timacum Minus, a multilayered necropolis was investigated from 1994 to 1996 and from 2013 to 2015. There are two main horizons of the necropolis - Late Roman and Early Medieval. The late Roman necropolis has three phases dated from the middle of the 4th to the middle of the 5th century. The early medieval necropolis, according to the new excavations, has two phases, the earlier dated to the 8th - 9th centuries and the later from the end of the 9th to the beginning of the 11th century. An interesting grave (G 159), belonging to the earlier medieval phase of necropolis, was discovered in 2014. It is a unique burial of a woman and a fox, which has its only analogy in a disturbed woman and fox grave (grave 16) at the early Avar necropolis in Becej. The burial with a fox could be interpreted in two ways - that the animal has a cult - ritual - magic meaning or that the fox was a pet of the deceased.

This paper examines the phenomenon of autofiction and the role of the author in fictional narratives in which the narrating entity relies, in a greater or lesser degree, on real-world referents. Moreover, the paper focuses on the difference between fiction and docu-fiction, and, essentially, the problem of narrativity and fictionality in the narrative discourse, and ultimately reception. The approach to defining key differences between autofiction and autobiography is comparative, and the objective of the paper is to illustrate the nature of autofiction, its effect on the reader, as well as to explain the rhetorical peculiarities of the author-performed narration in the context of Michel Houellebecq’s novel The Map and the Territory. In that sense, the paper investigates the referentiality of the autofictional protagonist, Michel Houellebecq, and the degree of veracity of his relation to the actual, real-world referent – the author. Therefore, the paper highlights autofictional elements in the novel and examines their referential relation to the author’s objective reality. The authors of this paper underscore the significance and rhetorical intent of the autofictional nature of the mentioned novel and interpret it as the author’s potential introspective expression.

Michael Ondaatje’s fourth novel, Anil’s Ghost , is almost universally deemed his “most politically ambivalent work” (Marinkova 2011:1) – and that’s putting it mildly. Since the publication of the novel in 2000, both Anil’s Ghost and its author have been accused of aestheticising terror, of an apolitical glance, an uneasy human rights discourse, and of evading the discussion of the actual causes of the Sri Lankan civil war, as summarised by Wendy Knepper (in Muhleisen and Matzke eds 2006: 45-6). While the aim of this paper is not necessarily to defend Ondaatje by refuting all of these claims individually, it nonetheless offers an interpretation of the novel, which implicitly problematises at least some of these assertions. The central argument is that the novel, while expressing unambiguous disillusionment with (violent) political struggle, is political in the sense that it unflinchingly explores state terrorism and one of its weapons, the enforced disappearance: even more so in its representation of the terror-defying potential of ethical witnessing (especially when contrasted with testifying). As the novel is explicitly set in real life “political time and historical moment” (Ondaatje 2001:2), these issues are contextualised within the history of state terror and resistance to it, on the one hand, and criticism of ethical witnessing on the other. In Anil’s Ghost , as in real life historical examples, moreover, both state terror and witnessing centre on torture, so the paper relies on insights by Avery Gordon, Elaine Scarry and Jenniffer Ballengee in particular to support the thesis that Ondaatje’s clinical and poetic focus on the bodies exposed to pain and death under conditions of state terror inevitably incites the empathetic and defiant response from the reader/viewer/the witness. It is here that the political potential of witnessing comes to the fore most forcefully.

The subject of this paper is a fragmented oil-lamp, discovered at Pontes (east Serbia) dated to the 6th century, whose handle ending is shaped as a woman’s head. The question posed in this paper is whether the image of this woman could be identified as a portrait of some particular person or if it is just as a pictorial sign with some complicated symbolic meaning. The suggested identification alludes to the image of some of the empresses from the second half of the 6th century. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177007: Romanisation, urbanisation and transformation of urban centres of civil, military and residential character in Roman provinces in the territory of Serbia i br. 47018: Viminacium, Roman city and military camp - research of the material and non material culture of inhabitants by using the modern technologies of remote detection, geophysics, GIS, digitalization and3D visualization]

Dissertation, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen, 2017; Aachen 386 S. (2019). = Dissertation, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen, 2017, This thesis contributes to the European as well as to memory studies by analyzing mnemonic conflicts in the European Union (EU) since the enlargement. The main focus lies on the contested interpretations of the communist past, which is expressed particularly in the debates on politics of memory within the EU institutions and reflected in the cultural practices of remembrance. The dissertation chooses an actor-centered approach examining institutional and non-institutional stakeholder in order to shed light on those controversies and to underline their cultural and political implications. The Accession of post-socialist countries is considered as turning point in two crucial ways: It was only after the enlargement that EU institutions valorized memory politics as a strategic field of intervention and identity-management. And only then the European Union turned into an arena where representatives of old and new Member States started to negotiate the legacy of totalitarian dictatorship and the matter of common European memory. That process revealed the competing narratives of a recent history. The dissertation discusses those attempts to shape a common European memory in the broad context of scholarly debates on legitimacy of the EU, while considering the theoretical insights on structure of collective memory. This study aims to explain why the EU fails to develop a comprehensive and socially sustainable narrative of its past. By doing so, the thesis intends not only to illuminate the practice of constructing collective memory under supranational conditions, but also to highlight political conflicts about the future shape and the current values of the EU that manifest themselves in different mnemonic regimes., Published by Aachen

The necropolises of the Roman fortification and settlement Timacum Minus, in the village of Ravna, near Knjaževac, were partially explored by systematical and rescue archaeological excavations. The most extensively explored was the part of the Late Roman necropolis on the eastern slope of the Slog hill, about 400m west of the fortification, where 80 graves from this period have been investigated. The analysis of the human osteological material, and the archaeological finds from the aforementioned necropolis, confirmed 17 military graves, containing adult male individuals with traces of injuries, stress markers and pathological changes, characteristic of a military population, as well as military equipment and weapons. At the time of the formation of the Late Roman necropolis at the site of Slog, during the second half of the 4th and the first half of the 5th century, the garrison of the Timacum Minus fortification consisted of an equestrian unit of pseudocomitatenses Timacenses, a part of the auxiliary formation that secured the forts and roads in the Timok region. Among the graves from the three phases of the Late Roman necropolis, similarities as well as certain differences are apparent, indicating changes in the structure of the civilian and military population of Timacum Minus. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177007: Romanisation, urbanisation and transformation of urban centres of civil, military and residential character in Roman provinces in the territory of Serbia]

During the systematic archaeological excavations in the fortress of Timacum Minus in Ravna near Knja'evac in 1991, a votive altar of Jupiter Paternus, dedicated by Lucius Petronius Timachus, a veteran of the legion VII Claudia, was discovered. The name (cognomen) Timachus was noted for the first time on this monument. It was developed from the ethnonime Timachi, or the hydronime Timachus, known from the historical resources of the Roman period. Timacum Maius and Timacum Minus, the fortifications and settlements in Upper Moesia, were named after the river Timachus (modern Timok), as was, probably, the whole region of the Basin of Timok. The votive altar of Jupiter Paternus was in secondary use as a construction material in the reconstruction of the horreum in the last phase of life in Timacim Minus, in the first half of 5th century A.D. The analysis of the archaeological context of the votive and funeral monuments from Ravna, used as spolia, have distinguished the three periods of their use from the last third of the 3rd century to the middle of the 5th century A.D.

The painter Sava Krabulevic is known only as the author of the iconostasis in the Monastery of Orahovica in eastern Slavonia. This work, which he produced in 1697, attracted the attention of Serbian art historians because some of the icons show Western influences. The article describes how Krabulevic found himself in Moscow (1688-1694) by dint of circumstance and adopted some of the West European painting techniques through Russian icon painters.

The purpose of research conducted from 2004-2007 within the scope of international cooperation with the Roman-Germanic Commission of the German Institute of Archaeology in Frankfurt was to investigate the site of Gamzigrad - Romuliana in the extra muros area, by means of geophysical methods and archaeological probe excavations. Based on a geophysical survey in 2005-2006, revisory excavations were carried out south of the fortified imperial palace, Felix Romuliana, whereby the necropolis of Romuliana, dating from Late Roman period, was partly explored.

In the course of investigations at Romuliana nine antler three-partite combs with a single row of teeth were found in the Late Roman horizons dating from the late 4th - mid 5th century. They were found in Tower 19, in the Palace II sector and in the Thermae sector. The combs can be classified as two types: three-partite unilateral combs with semicircular handle (Petkovic comb type VII) and three-partite unilateral combs with triangular handle decorated with horse protomes (Petkovic comb type VI). Two groups of these finds were distinguished after more detailed analysis; the earlier one including specimens originating from the Chernyahov-S?ntana de Mure? culture and later one including specimens made under "barbarian"influence and produced in Romuliana. These finds confirm the continuity of settlement at Romuliana in the Late Roman period, from the final quarter of the 4th until the end of the 5th century and open up the question of the character of the settlement.

The frescoes in the prothesis of the Church of the Holy Apostles in the Patriarchate of Pec in Kosovo, date from around 1260. They are in poor condition and little has been written about them. Only the portraits of the Serbian hierarchs and saints in the apsis, Sava and Arsenije, have drawn attention, chiefly because the image of the second Serbian archbishop Arsenije - is believed to have been painted during his lifetime. The scenes of the prophet Daniel and the composition The Penitence of King David, are considered to have been painted for their symbolic meaning, primarily regarding to the Holy Communion. Among the compositions, one can see that besides The David rebuked by Nathan, all of them are linked with the life and visions of the prophet Daniel [Daniel in the Lions' Den, The Prophet's Vision of the Kingdom of Heaven (Daniel 7, 1-28). The Archangel Gabriel Foretells Future Events to the Prophet Daniel (Daniel 8, 3; 8, 16-27) and perhaps, The Three Youths in the Fiery Furnace). The small, painted area in the interior (2 *3.70 meters), mostly with scenes devoted to the prophet Daniel, clearly indicates that the prothesis was dedicated to this Old Testament character. In Byzantine churches, the lateral sections of the altar area, the prothesis and the diakonikon - like the parecclesion - were dedicated to the Mother of God and the saints, in most cases, St. Nikolas and St. John the Forerunner. The choice of the prophet Daniel, as the patron of the Pec prothesis was quite unusual. This was obviously done according to the wishes of the Serbian archbishop, Danilo, who thereby wished to pay tribute to his Old Testament namesake. There are several instances in medieval times when Serbian donors dedicated churches to the saints, who were their namesakes. The donor ship of archbishop Danilo 1 also determines mi-date when the frescoes in the prothesis came into being. As he administered the Serbian church for a brief period of less than two years 1271-1272, the frescoes in the prothesis originated from that time. The dating of the other frescoes in the sanctuary and the naos could be shifted to the period between 1260 and 1265, because the prothesis was not decorated, probably due to the illness and death of archbishop Arsenije I (1266). The new dating of the prothesis in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Pec is also important because its refutes the thesis that living Serbian archbishops were painted alongside of the old Church Fathers in the scene of The Officiating Holy Bishops. Namely, the dating of the frescoes in the Pec prothesis in 1271-1272, excludes the likelihood of archbishop Arsenije having seen himself preparing the Holy Eucharist in the small apsis of the prothesis of the prophet Daniel, because he died in 1266. Since B. Todic established that the frescoes from the central section of the sanctuary and in the naos of Sopocani originated between 1272 and 1276, one must exclude the possibility that archbishop Sava II (died in 1271) was painted in the scene of The Officiating Holy Bishops during his lifetime. It would therefore emerge that the Serbian archbishops in the prothesis in Pec and the sanctuary in Sopocani. and in medieval Serbian churches in general were not painted beside the most revered Fathers of the Orthodox Christian Church, during their lifetimes.

During systematic archaeological excavations of the Roman town Ulpiana, from 1981 to 1987, which were carried out by the Archaeological Institute in Belgrade and the Regional Institute for Protection of Cultural Monuments in Pristina under supervision of dr. Maja Parovic-Pesikan, the north and west gate complex of the fortress and part of the town nucleus, 40 m along the main street cardo maximus, were investigated. On that occasion, fourteen fibulae and six fragments of fibulae, in clearly stratified layers and life horizons, were found at that site. Nine types of fibulae from the chronological period 1st to 5th century A.D. were identified. The majority of fibulae are made of bronze, one example is of silver and two of iron. The chronological determination of investigated horizons, which was ascertained by the author of excavations, is confirmed on the basis of the fibula finds dealt with in this study.

Kosovo und Metohien ist das „zentrale Gebiet“ der „serbischen Nation“. Nichts hat die serbische Identität so geprägt wie die Schlacht auf dem Amselfeld und die daraus resultierende Kosovo -Mythologie. Das „Trauma“ der Niederlage des mittelalterlichen serbischen Heeres am Amselfeld, der Exodus der Serben und jahrhundertelange Besatzung durch die Osmanen haben viele Serben bis in die Gegenwart nachhaltig geprägt. Neben dem Kosovo – Mythos ist die serbisch – orthodoxe Kirche das „zentrale Moment“ und die einzige Institution, welche die „serbische Identität“ über jahrhunderte der Besatzung am Leben hielt. Den Katalysator einer übersteigerten serbischen Selbstwahrnehmung bildeten die serbischen Medien und die politische Führung in Serbien, die sich des Kosovo-Mythos bedienten um eine „Mobilisierung der Massen“ zu erreichen. Die Dämonisierung der Serben in den letzten 10 Jahren führte zu einem langsamen Prozess der Gleichgültigkeit, Desinteresse und Resignation gegenüber politischen Prozessen. Jahrelange Blockade der Serben von Seiten der UN und EU Gemeinschaft führte zu einem allgemeinen Eindruck des „Unverstandenfühlens“ , der Isolation und Mißtrauen gegenüber dem „Westen“.