MILOJE VASIĆ - ONE OF SERBIAN ARCHAEOLOGY FOUNDERS

BIJELJINA, NOVEMBER 3 /SRNA/ – Miloje Vasić /1869–1956/, one of the founders of archaeology in Serbia, died on November 4, 1956.

Vasić's life's work was the excavation of the prehistoric settlement of Vinča.

Based on his findings, he put forward the theory that the Danube culture originated in the Mediterranean region /the Aegean culture/ and the Near East, rather than in the Nordic countries.

Vasić published more than 100 scientific papers, including Prehistoric Vinča, Architecture and Sculpture in Dalmatia, Žiča and Lazarica, and The Ionian Colony of Vinča.

He was a professor at the University of Belgrade and a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Some of Vasić's archaeological research was conducted with the sponsorship of the Russian Imperial Archaeological Institute in Constantinople and the Englishman Sir Charles Hyde.

Between 1932 and 1936, Vasić published the results of his extensive research in the four-volume monograph Prehistoric Vinča.

He published more than 200 scientific papers and is regarded as the father of modern Serbian archaeology.

Vasić is considered one of the most prominent Serbian scholars in the humanities and was included among the 100 most distinguished Serbs in the book of the same name, published in 1993.

On April 20, 2007, a bust of Miloje Vasić was unveiled outside the grammar school in Veliko Gradište, his hometown.