One of the special representatives at the 35th ARARA Conference was Mr. Ilaz Thaqi, Head of the Kosova Rock Art Research Association (KRARA), the newest member of the International Federation of Rock Art Organizations (IFRAO). Given the unfamiliar terrain being covered, we took the opportunity to ask Mr. Thaqi to comment more amply on Kosovar rock art in the following interview.

Murray: How did you become involved in rock art studies? Under what circumstances? For how long?

Thaqi: I’m very thankful  for your  interest in Kosovo rock art and for my acceptance to present a paper at the ARARA Conference 2008 where  I met  the Great Spirit of Americans  and  great hearts  of  researchers. Especially I want to thank Ken Hedges, Daniel McCarthy and Mavis Greer for this opportunity.

During my student days in the Department of History at Prishtina University in the 1980s, I was interested in ancient artifacts. At that time, I went to many archeological localities in conjunction with other colleges and we collected many artifacts to open an archeological exposition in our faculty. That was accomplished and still exists today.   During  the  1990s  at  the  time  of  occupation  by  Serbian forces, I worked as a  journalist for  independent weekly magazines and agencies. At that time, it could be impossible to work on culture; Serbian policy and the army were usurping all institutions. After the 1999 war, Kosovo won freedom, and in 2001 I began working at Radio Television of Kosovo (RTK public national television), presenting a documentary program “Diku ne Kosove” (“Somewhere in Kosovo”). Kosovo has a lot of oral traditions and material about cultural places, localities, and shrines stretching back thousands of years.

Our big rock art discovery happened during our cover-age of a ceremony on Grape Day (8 August 2003) in the village Zatriqi, municipality of Rahovec. This region has beautiful landscapes and a long tradition of vineyard cultivation and high quality wines. I had information from a friend about the rite of passage but not about the engraved rock art. There in the mountain village, the local young people go to the rocks where traditionally every year they perform the ceremony. There is a beautiful panoramic view of Kosovo from there and hundreds of signs and symbol are engraved exactly on those rocks.   I was immediately interfered in what the locals had to say about the engravings. According to the oral tradition, the rock art marks a place considered sacred. They told me that according to legend, things are visible just on that day of ceremony and not other days during the year. Therefore, I presented the ceremony as well as the rock art for the first time in Kosovo on TV.   That year I contacted Dr. Paolo Mietto, head of the Department of Paleontology, Geology and Geophysics at the University of Padua, Italy. Dr. Paolo had just discovered the oldest human footprints in a volcanic ash near Naples Italy. I proposed to the Ministry of Culture and Radio Television of Kosovo to invite Dr. Paolo for a one-week expedition.  In November 2004 he came to Kosovo. Together we went to the Zatriqi region to see the cultural events and also learn about the stratigraphy and geological origin of the rocks in that region which correspond to the late Jurassic and beginning of the Cretaceous periods. Dr. Paolo was fascinated by the beautiful forms of engraved rock art on the horizontal surface. We concluded that the engravings were made by flint or quartz stone tools.

A second expedition was organized with Prof. Emmanuel Anati, founder and director of Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici in Capo di Ponte Brescia, Italy. With  Prof. Anati, visits were made to Zatriqi, Vlashnje and Rogova villages. Analysis of the Zatriqi graphemes led us to conclude that they were an inscription system. Prof. Anati thinks they are a big discovery, not just for Kosovo but with interest for world cultural civilization.

In 2007 I presented a paper on “Kosovo Rock Art Interpretation and Decoding” at the XXII International Valcamonica Symposium 2007.  I have also published things about rock art from time to time in the local press and magazines and on TV shows. So from 2003, I’m occupied with rock art studies.

Murray: Kosovo is a small country. How many rock art sites have been reported in Kosovar territory?  Are they found in any particular kinds of locations? Has your own research been concentrated at any particular site(s)?

Thaqi:  Kosovo has two kinds of rock art, engraved and pictographic. Schematic  art  includes  the  Zatriqi  inscription, and menhirs marking ancient graves in Aqareva, municipality of Skenderaj and  in Papaz village  in  the  central Kosovo  municipality  of Theranda  (Suhareka).  Engraved grave ones in schematic style, and pictograms, including several spirals and zoomorphic deer heads pictured in red are found in Vlashnje near Prizren. In another part of Kosovo, we have discovered one big net engraved on top of the caprock.  I have registered dozens of menhir localities. They are a widespread cultural tradition from ancient times all around Kosovo. These are still not studied, and except for Aqareva and Papaz, we have no archaeological finds.  I hope next year to present a paper about them at the ARARA conference in Bakersfield. We have lots—maybe decades—of work to do on Kosovo rock art.

Murray: How old is Kosovar rock art? To what periods of European prehistory does it correspond? Is some of it from historical times?

Thaqi: Very interesting question. We discussed this subject with Prof. Anati during his expedition in Kosovo and we both agreed there must be Paleolithic and Mesolithic localities which are as yet undiscovered. We have already agreed to organize our next expedition to find these remains.  It’s impossible that there are sites all around Kosovo from those times, and not in Kosovo. The peoples of that time could not go around Kosovo without entering there.  I hope the five-seven day expedition we plan to organize will discover sites from that period.

Kosovo has a lot of Neolithic sites and also artifacts very representative of early European culture. The Kosovo rock art discovered by us belongs to Neolithic European prehistory (4000 BC) and part of it may be older from the Mesolithic period. For some of engraved signs and symbols on the menhirs, we  still  can’t  say  exactly  from which  period are, but from their style, grammar, syntax, and associations, they are very  similar  to  the  schematics of Neolithic age. I can’t say for the site of Papaz. I have some indications of agricultural styles from the Copper and Bronze Age but they require much more detailed study.

Murray:  Your paper at the conference dealt in particular with the “Zatriqi inscription.” Where does it come from? Is it unique? What does it refer to? When you call it an “inscription,” what kind of writing does it represent?

Thaqi: This is an independent invention of the community who lived there without any indications of outside influence. Earlier I mentioned that Kosovo rock art represents the roots of European culture and civilization. Schematic rock  art  spreads  in  Italy,  France  and  other  parts  of  the world; the style is same and, but anywhere in any country, its signs and symbols represent the earliest dialects. I have decoded the inscription using typology, associations, super-impositions, grammar and syntaxes. In the end, we can read the messages. They belong to the first inscription system in Europe invented by people from Neolithic times. The rock art site has conventional signs and symbols which spread all around the world. Their style is like Chinese script. They  are  signs with superimpositions engraved in variable reading order going from right to  left and from  left to right on both the vertical and horizontal. From the decoding efforts, we recognize that they did not have standard grammatical rules when they have invented this script.

What is much more important is that we can read these inscriptions. They represent ideological aspects, prayer, good hopes, names of gods, and they have a perfectly clear structural formulation. I presented some of these words in my ARARA talk. For example, +Y, which in Albanian is TY, means “For You,” and also Y+ (in Albanian YT) means “Yours.” Words are represented by two or three letters and they are connected with ideographic signs.  For example, one of compositions shows a  large-sized vulva and star; in the same composition are small signs which are the letters XY  in the middle of the star symbol meaning  famine and on  the  vertical  ET, which mean  “ god”  in Albanian. These are word forms which are still present in standard Albanian language. Rock art from Zatriqi represents the earliest layer of European civilization and shows the great mind of what we call prehistoric man. It is an ideographic writing system. 

Murray: Have any Kosovar rock art sites been damaged or endangered as a result of the recent conflicts? What kind of problems in rock art preservation and conservation do you face?

Thaqi: I don’t know exactly whether any rock art sites were damaged during recent conflicts because we still have not exactly registered all sites. So we do not yet have complete information about that.  Problems with preservation and conservation relate to funding. We have good collaborative relations with cultural institutions and many projects, but without funds, we are short. On the other hand, funds dictate the rules. Some times in publications, I must be careful not to give precise localities, because they are not protected. It’s a big problem for us, and we are afraid of damage from vandalism or clandestine activities. 

Murray: How did your organization, the Kosova Rock Art Research Association, come into existence? What kind of activities does the group currently pursue?

Thaqi: Interest in our cultural heritage and work is my only preoccupation. With effort, I keep the Kosova Rock Art Research Association alive. I always take into consideration research based on modern methodology. Many people are interested in joining us but we have no funds. Now I’m interested to activate one group to conduct ethnographic research, given the continuity of symbolic representation over time to the present. So I’m personally occupied on menhirs with my colleague Shemsi Krasniqi, who is very interested in supporting and contributing to rock art studies. He is also one of the founders of KRARA.  I  am  very  glad to be in Farmington New Mexico,  and  I hope  it  is  just  the beginning for our cooperation. I invite you to visit rock art sites in Kosovo and hope for common projects with ARARA.

You are welcome at any time in Kosovo as if it were your own home.

Courtesy of La Pintura, the official newsletter of the American Rock Art Research Association.