ABSTRACT
The beginnings of bioarchaeological research in Croatia are related to the palaeoanthropological studies carried out by Dragutin Gorjanovic´ Kramberger at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century (Gorjanovic´-Kramberger 1899, 1906, 1913). His analysis of the Neanderthal skeletal material recovered from Hušnjakovo brdo near Krapina significantly contributed to the acceptance of the existence of fossil man, and thus, to the acceptance of the concept of the evolution of mankind. Gorjanovic´’s multidisciplinary analysis of human, animal and stone artefacts recovered from Krapina were crucial, not only for the reconstruction of the anatomical features and the quality of life of the Neanderthal inhabitants of Croatia, but they also provided clues to some social characteristics of Neanderthal society. These analyses were part of the foundations of modern palaeoanthropology. Bioarchaeological analyses of modern man in Croatia began after the Second World War
with two major publications by Franjo Ivanicˇek. In these works Ivanicˇek presented the results of detailed palaeodemographic and craniometric analyses of the mediaeval sites of Bijelo Brdo (Ivanicˇek 1949) and Ptuj (Ivanicˇek 1951). Unfortunately these studies, although in many respects ahead of their time (for instance the anthropological analysis of the 11th-13th-century Bijelo Brdo site incorporated the results of animal bone and pollen analysis), were not noticed by the international scientific community, possibly because of the fact that they were written in Croatian. Twenty years later, Ivanicˇek’s student Georgina Pilaric´ published several papers that focused on the craniometric characteristics of early mediaeval Croat populations (Pilaric´ 1967, 1968, 1969, 1974; Pilaric´ and Schwidetzky 1987). A major qualitative and quantitative leap forward in Croatian physical anthropology and
bioarchaeology began in the 1990s. It was enabled through the work of two extraordinary scientists: Pavao Rudan and Hubert Maver, who in 1977 founded both the Croatian Anthropological Society (Hrvatsko antropološko društvo), and the scientific journal Collegium Antropologicum. They organized numerous international scientific workshops including among them the annually held School of Biological Anthropology. Their work led to the founding of the first scientific and educational institution dedicated exclusively to anthropological research in Croatia: the Institute of Anthropology in Zagreb, established in 1992.
