A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARCHEOLOGY IN SISAK IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 19TH AND THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY

A small number of towns in Croatia have experienced cultural luck and archaeological neglect during their thousands of years of development in the same urban area. Sisak, the Roman Siscia, is among them, and might be thought of as a symbol of a "phoenix" town. For the very thing that helped Sisak to form its urban identity, and which was largely based on its historical heritage, was a handicap to precise definition of that history. We may say that in certain cases archaeological scholarship polarized too late. Certainly in Sisak systematic archaeological excavations, at least as far as the ancient intra muros is concerned, came at the last moment, indeed almost after the last moment. In conditions in which there is no binding law or any kind of regulations governing the legal position concerning discoveries of antiquities the position on the ground may well depend on individuals. One such individual who knew the importance of and how to evaluate finds and who in addition, because of the nature of his construction work, was constantly involved with them, was Andrija Colussi (b. Ossoppo, Udine/Friuli, Italy, 1848 - d. Sisak, 8 February 1929). He developed into one of the town's best known builders and left his mark on an entire epoch of development in Sisak, and on the transformation of what was, in the urban and achitectural sense, a backward commercial centre into an ample and prosperous town with architecturally impressive residential quarters and a functional city centre. He was well known for high quality constructions all built on deep foundations and it was in this way that he came to uncover a large number of finds of Sisak's historical past. This provoked his interest for antiquity and he became a "self-taught" archaeologist who learned from direct sources and later continued his education by studying archaeological publications. The result of his long years of study combined with the discovery and evaluation of artefacts made him an archaeological pioneer the value of whose work was recognised by three directors of the Archaeological Department of the National Museum in Zagreb. In this way he came to have personal contact with Sime Ljubic, Josip Brunsmid i Viktor Hoffiller, and thus constituted the long arm of practice. Perhaps the best assessment of his archaeological activities was given by his friend the town historian Ferdo Hefele who wrote in the local newspaper "A number of Sisak collectors are remembered for their collection of antiquities but the most persevering and generous of them has been the Sisak builder Andrija Colussi. His finds have been placed in a separate part of the museum by the directors of the Zagreb Archeological Museum" (HEFELE 1907: 1).