Damastion (Ancient Greek: Δαμάστιον) was an ancient city in the area of central Balkans, known for its silver coins dating back to the 4th century BC. It is attested only in Strabo who says that the city had silver-mines and locates it in Illyria.[1][2][3] The ancient author reports that the city was under the authority of the Illyrian tribes of Dyestes and Enchelei-Sesarethii,[4] and that Aegina colonized it.[3] At 356–358 B.C. the mines came under the control of Macedon.[5]
The exact site of Damastion is not yet identified with certainty. Various sites in Serbia,[6]North Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania have been considered as the location of this ancient town.
Location
Silver coin of Damastion, 4th century BC. Obv.:Apollo head, laureate. Rev.:sacrificial tripod, letters ΔΑΜΑΣΤΙΝΩΝ (of the Damastians) - ΚΗΦΙ.
Damastion was issuing silver in the form of coins bearing the head of Apollo on the obverse and a sacrificial tripod with the inscription "ΔΑΜΑΣΤΙΝΩΝ" on the reverse. These coins have been found in many places in the Balkans, mainly in southern Serbia, north-eastern Kosovo, eastern North Macedonia, west Bulgaria, Shkodër in Albania and as far as Romania, Trieste and Corfu. They are dated in the 4th century BC. Most attempts to locate Damastion are based on the study of the coins and their distribution. One author, Dr Imhoof-Blumer, endeavoured to find modern derivatives of the name and assumed that Damesi, a village in Albania, could have been Damastion.[7] There are a number of other hypotheses[8][9] about its location somewhere near Resen in ancient Paionia,[10] modern North Macedonia.
The most recent location that was proposed was at Serbian archaeological site Kale-Krševica, south-east of Vranje (southern Serbia) [11] where 5th-century BC foundations of an Ancient Greek urban town have been unearthed.[12][13]
Dr. Petar Popović from the Institute of Archeology in Belgrade says that Kale-Krševica could be the city of Damastion. [13] He estimated that only 6% was excavated.
History
The Illyrian state controlled the mines of Damastion at least from the 5th century BC.[14] The silver mines of Damastion increased the interest of the Greeks in Illyrian territory.[15] In the 431 BC Greeks from Aegina had colonised the city.[3]
The silver mines of Damastion were close to Dassaretia, a region that was centered around Lake Lychnidus.[16] Damastion began to mint coinage from the end of the 5th century BC. Although the site of the mines of Damastion remains still unlocated, the rise of the earliest remarkable Illyrian coinage in the lakeland coincided with the earliest known important consolidation of Illyrian military power in the same region.[17] In 4th century BC the city, and its inhabitants Damastini, were subject most likely to the Illyrian king Bardylis.[17][18][19][20] The circulation of the coins of Damastion included Dardania (today's Kosovo and its surrounding areas) up to the west, to the southern Adriatic coast.[21]
The city and its silver mines were most likely captured by Philip II of Macedon after he defeated Illyrian king Bardyllis.[22][23] At the time of Alexander the Great's Balkan campaign, in particular in Illyria, the autonomous minting of Damastion ceased, meanwhile Macedonian coins of Alexander and his father Philip II appear in the region, suggesting that the kings of Macedon have set up a unified monetary system by capturing all the metal resources available in the region.[24]
^Wilkes, J.J. The Illyrians, 1992, ISBN0-631-19807-5, Page 223,"... Among the southern Illyrians the deposits which provided Damastion (Strabo 7.7, 8), somewhere in the Ohrid region, with a silver coinage may be the same ones that attracted Corinthian ..."
^ abcIn An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis by Mogens Herman, ISBN0-19-814099-1, 2004, "As a long-distance trading community, Aigina was not an active coloniser, but colonised Kydonia (no. 968) in 519, Adria (no. 75) c.C61, and Damastion in Illyria after 431 (Strabo 8.6.16)."
^May J.M.F. The coinage of Damastion and the lesser coinages of the Illyro-Paeonian region. Oxford University Press, London, 1939
^Barrington atlas of the Greek and Roman world: map-by-map directory, Tome 1,by Richard J. A. Talbert,page 758,near Resen?
^The Illyrians
by John Wilkes,page 128,"north or northeast of ohrid"
^The Odrysian Kingdom of Thrace: Orpheus Unmasked (Oxford Monographs on Classical Archaeology) by Z. H. Archibald, 1998, ISBN0-19-815047-4, page 107,"of Paion- ian Damastion"
^(Popovic, P., Kale-Krsevica excavations 2001-2004, Bulletin of the National Museum Vranje, 33: 25-49, 2005.)
^The Cambridge Ancient History Volume 6: The Fourth Century BC by D.M.Lewis, ISBN0-521-23348-8, 1994, p.429 "Bardylis combined military and economic developments. His subjects, the Damastini, began to issue a fine silver coinage c. 395, which adopted a version of the standard and some emblems of"
^The Cambridge Ancient History Vol.6: The Fourth Century BC by D.M.Lewis, ISBN0-521-23348-8, 1994, p.422: "... Silver was mined in antiquity by the Damastini to the east and the north east of Lake Ochrid.
^Wilkes, J.J. The Illyrians, 1992, ISBN0-631-19807-5, p.128, "Nothing is so far known of the extraction of silver, and the location of Damastion, with its remarkable silver coinage, remains a mystery"...."
