The Borderland Culture and Frontier Identity of Skopje Valley during Roman Times, The Political and Cultural Boundaries of the Roman Balkans through the Archaeological Collections of the Museum of the City of Skopje

Initiated in the first post-war years and established in 1949, the Museum of the city of Skopje, was envisioned to represent an important cultural core of the newly established Macedonian state. The museum of the new capital city, reflected on the identity of modern Macedonia and Macedonians deeply rooted on the classical narratives and traditions. With its rich archaeological collection, focused on the archaeological material from the ancient Roman city of Skupi, laying underneath the modern Macedonian capital, the museum still represents one of the most important archaeological and cultural institutions in the country. Yet, despite its central position of a capital city museum, this institution also speaks of a local history, which is a history of borderlands and cultural interactions. Some researchers even relate the origin of the name of the city of Skopje with this identity, claiming that one of its historical variations Skopia is rooted in the function of this settlement as “watch-place” on the northern frontiers. The area of Skopje, called Skopje valley, spreading over the two shores of the “wide-running”, “deep-whirling” river Axios, as Homer calls it, has been closely connected to the Mediterranean cultural influences for millennia. Yet, it also represents the most northern Axios (Vardar) valley and an area of the wider Aegean drainage basin that borders on the north the geographic and drainage divides, as well as the cultural borders of the continental Central Europe. Thus, throughout history, it represented true borderlands and a meeting point of diverse cultural influences from the Mediterranean and continental areas of Eurasia. This paper explores the three elements of borderland culture and frontier identity of Skopje valley during Roman times and their treatment and impact over museum collections. It elaborates over the borderlands’ position and culture of this area in the first two centuries of the Roman presence in the Balkans. In addition, it reveals the position of this valley as cultural frontier between the prosperous and stable province of Macedonia and the militarized provinces of the Northern Balkans during the most prosperous period of the Roman empire (1-3c. AD). Finally, it presents the cultural transformations provoked by the process of approaching of the northern imperial frontier, that in the later empire reached the fringes of Skopje valley. The paper suggests that despite the position of the Museum of the city of Skopje, as important cultural core of the whole country and its culture, as a local museum it has one more story to tell. An important story of a Frontier Museum that reveals through its archaeological record the complex interactions of various people and cultures over the political and cultural boundaries of the Roman world.