In the Footsteps of Aeneas: A Microcosm of Albania's History: 1993-1998


A Microcosm of Albania's History: 1993-1998	"In the Footsteps of Aeneas: Five Years at Butrint" January 14, 2000

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View of Butrint from the south
(Courtesy Richard Hodges)

The Butrint Foundation, led by its energetic director, Patrick Fairweather (now retired from the Foreign Office), has been involved with all these plans. But in 1998, after several years of diffident relations with Tirana, we managed to build a vital new program for Butrint. With UNESCO's assessment report as an instrument for action, the Foundation held a seminar in April at Saranda to examine "The Future of Butrint." Members of the World Bank and UNESCO teams participated with elected local government officials, members of the Institute of Archaeology and Institute of Monuments, and the minister of culture in discussing how best to proceed at Butrint. The Getty-sponsored seminar led directly to recommendations about enlarging the zone inscribed as a World Heritage Site, as well as to a call for an integrated Butrint office, managed ticketing at the site, and agreed conservation principals. The zone will now encompass an area covering several square miles, reaching to the Straits of Corfu to the west, and to the east side of Lake Butrint to the east. In July 1998 Prime Minister Nano, by now well aware of the larger investment implications for the region, supported the outline recommendations despite a good deal of criticism vented in Albania's newspapers by those who favored developing the environs of Butrint to attract cheap package tourism and feared the implications of the Butrint Foundation's plans for Albania's most popular site.

By September 1998 matters had moved on. The last season of the Butrint Foundation's first protocol (1993-1998) with the Institute of Archaeology ended successfully when more than 50 Albanians and Britons collaborated on a large-scale excavation of the Byzantine palace, discovering a hitherto unknown fourth-century precursor. Meanwhile, the visitor ticketing at Butrint was now under control; an exhibition on the future of Butrint in Saranda attracted widespread support; a UNESCO mission returned to walk the bounds of the proposed new World Heritage Site--proposals which will now be placed before the Albanian government; a Butrint Foundation seminar on the presentation and conservation of the sixth-century Byzantine baptistry with its splendid mosaic pavement, with the help of participants including members of the Getty Conservation Institute, ICCROM, UNESCO, and the Greek ministry of culture, developed a program for implementation as of 1999; and the first payment of the World Bank funds has been agreed and should arrive shortly.

The Lion Gate (Courtesy Richard Hodges) [LARGER IMAGE]

Looking to the immediate future, the Butrint Foundation is now developing three projects, trusting that the momentum is in place to safeguard the archaeological site. First, a new program of archaeological intervention has to be designed in collaboration with the Albanian Institute of Archaeology. Our aim is to make it a training project for all students on the new course in archaeology taught at the University of Tirana. Second, the Butrint Foundation, with support from the Heinz Foundation and Packard Foundation, has been collecting the dispersed Butrint excavation archives of the Italian mission before the Second World War and the Albanian Institute of Archaeology during the communist era with the intention of creating a virtual, electronic archive suitable for visitors and scholars. Modeled upon the first experiments by Siena University in archaeological parks in western Tuscany, Italy, the virtual archive would store all the information relating to the history and archaeological investigations at Butrint, but be organized in such a way as to permit the nonspecialist to access basic information, and from there, detailed archival data. In Rome two unpublished manuscripts by Ugolini have come to light, besides a film of the archaeologist at work, while in Tirana's national archive Ugolini's correspondence, including letters from Mussolini, has been discovered. Third, a management plan for Butrint is now being prepared. This will examine how the site and its context are protected and organized, alongside an analysis of the implications of promoting and displaying Butrint for visitors. Taking and developing the principles discussed in the two seminars held during 1998, the Foundation has assembled an international team to work with Tirana-based colleagues covering issues as diverse as conservation, hydrology, and ornithology.

Sunset over Butrint (Courtesy Richard Hodges) [LARGER IMAGE]

Five years since my first sight of Butrint seems a long time. A combination of old communist obstreperousness and post-communist corruption has not made it easy. Yet, by advocating the importance of archaeology for the identity of these people as well as tourism in this region, we have developed an agenda that promises to show substantive dividends. Just as archaeologists can no longer work in foreign countries operating for colonial purposes, so today it is necessary to recognize that, as proponents of cultural heritage, we must attempt to develop our unearthed discoveries, as best we can, to help the tourist industry. Of course, the circumstances are not easy. Now, five years on, it is transparently evident that the Albanians are flotsam, floating beyond the rim of one nation or another ever since Butrint effectively fell into decline. Today they are gentle people. The first image, even of their grandees, is of their poorly shaved faces, gentle enquiring eyes, and holed and scuffed shoes. They have been hijacked by their neighbors and, since the fall of communism, by music television and CNN. Digging to discover the end of Roman Butrint, putatively at the hands of Slavic invaders, it is not hard to empathize with these people, living in a communist concrete poverty, surrounded by a history and magnificent landscape, and wonder just where we are all drifting. The excavations at Butrint have been an encounter with our world of politicians, corruption, and the sweeping majesty of the setting in which these hapless people in their tattered harmlessness now find themselves. It will take many more years before Butrint is safe and its environment serves a community eager for change and hope.

Richard Hodges is a professor in the School of World Art Studies, University of East Anglia, and was director of the British School at Rome from 1988 to 1995.

A Microcosm of Albania's History
1993-1998