• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
• Publications close
• Research data close
• Research software close
• Other research products close
• Article close
• European Commission close
• EU close
• Croatian Scientific Bibliography - ... close

The Adriatic Sea and Balkan Peninsula were an important corridor for the spread of agriculture northwards and westwards from the Near East into Europe. Therefore, the pace and nature of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition along the Adriatic coastline has important implications for the movement of new peoples and/or ideas during one of the most eventful periods in European prehistory. We present new Early Neolithic radiocarbon and stable isotope evidence from humans and animals from the Zemunica cave site in Dalmatia, Croatia. The results show that these humans date to the earliest Neolithic in the region, and they have completely terrestrial diets, where the main protein source was most likely to have come from domesticated animals. Data are then compared to previous isotope and archaeological evidence to explore models for the spread of agriculture along the eastern Adriatic coast.

AbstractThe last Prime Minister of Yugoslavia Ante Marković was considered by many within the country and in the international community to be Yugoslavia’s last chance for a peaceful transition toward democracy and capitalism. In spite of his popularity, the Reformist party he created failed decisively in the first democratic elections of 1990. We expose the reasons for this failure by analyzing electoral, economic, and sociodemographic data on the level of more than two hundred Yugoslav municipalities where the Reformists put forward their candidates. Our analysis shows that the party’s failure had little to do with the voters’ exposure to the effects of the free market reforms undertaken by Marković’s federal government during this period. Instead, the Reformists’ results were largely determined by the communities’ ethnic makeup and interethnic balance. The Reformists suffered at the hands of a strong negative campaign by the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milošević, and they were squeezed out by the ethnically based parties that benefited from voters behaving strategically in the electoral marketplace dominated by questions of nationalism. The analysis presented here offers important lessons for our understanding of Yugoslavia’s breakup, post-communist transitions in general, and electoral politics in societies on the verge of ethnic conflict.

Climate change has led to concerns about increasing river floods resulting from the greater water-holding capacity of a warmer atmosphere1. These concerns are reinforced by evidence of increasing economic losses associated with flooding in many parts of the world, including Europe2. Any changes in river floods would have lasting implications for the design of flood protection measures and flood risk zoning. However, existing studies have been unable to identify a consistent continental-scale climatic-change signal in flood discharge observations in Europe3, because of the limited spatial coverage and number of hydrometric stations. Here we demonstrate clear regional patterns of both increases and decreases in observed river flood discharges in the past five decades in Europe, which are manifestations of a changing climate. Our results—arising from the most complete database of European flooding so far—suggest that: increasing autumn and winter rainfall has resulted in increasing floods in northwestern Europe; decreasing precipitation and increasing evaporation have led to decreasing floods in medium and large catchments in southern Europe; and decreasing snow cover and snowmelt, resulting from warmer temperatures, have led to decreasing floods in eastern Europe. Regional flood discharge trends in Europe range from an increase of about 11 per cent per decade to a decrease of 23 per cent. Notwithstanding the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the observational record, the flood changes identified here are broadly consistent with climate model projections for the next century4,5, suggesting that climate-driven changes are already happening and supporting calls for the consideration of climate change in flood risk management. Analysis of a comprehensive European flood dataset reveals regional changes in river flood discharges in the past five decades that are consistent with models suggesting that climate-driven changes are already happening.

The Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters at Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts owns sixteen paintings by old masters from the collection of Ervin (1884–1966) and Branka Weiss (d. 1975). Based on a comprehensive study of documents stored in various archival institutions and holdings, this article outlines the fate of the Weiss collection shortly before, during, and after World War II, and identifies the circumstances under which the said paintings were transferred to the Strossmayer Gallery. Industrialist and wholesaler Ervin Weiss, director of the Trbovlje Coalmine, enjoyed a high reputation in the interwar period, both in economy and in the cultural life of Zagreb. Well informed about the art markets in major regional centres, especially Vienna, Ervin Weiss managed to assemble a significant art collection, which enjoyed an international esteem. Having married Branka Huth in 1925, Weiss converted to Catholicism. After the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia, his collection was listed and photographed, and placed under the authority of the Conservation Office, but it did not share the fate of most Jewish collections that were voluntarily or forcibly stored at the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb during the war. After the war, in 1945, Weiss’ collection in his apartment on the second floor of a building at Boškovićeva Street no. 2 was registered and placed under the protection of the Conservation Institute, and in 1947 it was granted the status of a private collection of public significance. However, in 1949, the property of Ervin Weiss was sequestered and subsequently confiscated, and his artworks were handed over to the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts. The Weiss collection is now scattered across various museum institutions in Zagreb. An analysis of annotated Viennese auction catalogues confirms Ervin Weiss’ direct involvement in the art market there. His name appears in the so-called protocol catalogues of the Auktionshaus für Altertümer Glückselig and the auctioneer C. J. Wawra (Alfred Wawra). Based on the information about the sale/purchase of paintings by the old masters, new insights could be obtained about the early provenance of some of them and their fate before entering the Weiss collection. In 1925, Ervin Weiss bought the Portrait of a Lady with a Lap Dog from the Auktionshaus für Altertümer Glückselig, at the sale of the collection of Jacques Mühsam (1857–1930) a Berlin-based textile producer, and in 1927 the painting A Harbour in the Netherlands at the sale of the legacy of Victor (1865–1919) and Helena Mautner-Markhof (d. 1926), descendants of a reputable Czech family of brewers. It is from the same auction house that Weiss most likely bought the painting Holy Family with St Elizabeth and St John the Baptist, originating from the Fürsten von und zu Liechtenstein collection in Vienna. It had been part of the princely collection from before 1807 to 1922, when it was sold to the Glückselig auction house. Another painting that was probably acquired from the same auctioneer was A Lady Conversing with a Gentleman, which has a note in Cyrillic on the back saying “M. G. Kraevskaya” and “V. F. Kraevsky”. Research on the physical traces on the back of paintings complement our knowledge of Weiss’ purchases in the Austrian market. A piece of paper with the stamp of the Bundesdenkmalamt, used from 1923 to 1934, is preserved on the back of the Village Festival and probably also on the back of the Prodigal Son, although in a very poor state of preservation. So far, the only export license found in the Bundesdenkmalamt archive in Vienna issued to Ervin Weiss probably refers to the Herd with the Shepherds, which corresponds to the brief description “unbekannter Maler, Vieherde a./d. [an der] Tränke”. U fundusu Strossmayerove galerije starih majstora HAZU šesnaest je slika starih majstora iz zbirke Ervina i Branke Weiss. Obuhvatnim istraživanjem dokumenata koji se čuvaju u različitim arhivskim institucijama i fondovima ocrtava se sudbina zbirke Weiss neposredno prije, za vrijeme i nakon Drugoga svjetskog rata te se utvrđuju okolnosti transfera slika starih majstora u Strossmayerovu galeriju. Kroz prizmu istraživanja prodaje i kupovine slika starih majstora utvrđuje se aktivnost Ervina Weissa na bečkom tržištu umjetninama. Također se donose nova saznanja o provenijenciji pojedinih slika, prije njihova ulaska u zbirku Weiss, koja su u nekim slučajevima upotpunjena i rezultatima istraživanja fizičkih tragova na poleđinama slikā.

The Avar period cemetery of Nuštar, situated in continental Croatia, is dated to the 8th and the beginning of the 9th century. Rescue archaeological excavation yielded 196 burials. During analysis of human skeletal remains, an individual with a large cranial lesion caused by trepanation was found. Trepanation is a surgical procedure performed on the skull in order to remove a fragment of the bone using a sharp instrument or drill. It has been practiced in various regions since the prehistoric period for both medical and ritual reasons. The aim of this paper is to provide a description of the observed lesion based on macroscopic appearance accompanied by radiography, computed tomography scanning and 3D optical scanning. Furthermore, possible cause and employed technique are taken into consideration, as well as cultural and historical implications of the case.

Abstract. Based on accurate Lennard-Jones type interaction potentials, we derive a closed set of state equations for the description of warm atomic gases in the presence of ionization processes. The specific heat is predicted to exhibit peaks in correspondence to single and multiple ionizations. Such kinetic analogue in atomic gases of the Schottky anomaly in solids is enhanced at intermediate and low atomic densities. The case of adiabatic compression of noble gases is analyzed in detail and the implications on sonoluminescence are discussed.