Page 133 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 13(2) (2025)

archaeological facts, rather than being a reflec- traces of the Roman era on the archipelago as a
tion the of the current state of research. whole, including the spatial components of Ro-
Attempts to locate Roman Crexi using re- man land use, offers a different perspective. Af-
mote sensing data (airborne laser scanning and ter all, the spatial components of systematic Ro-
aerial archaeology) also failed to produce satis- man settlement expansion also bear witness to
factory results. There may be several reasons for history, not just monuments and artefacts. This
this. For successful localisation using archaeo- is the case in Osor: Given its location and size,
logical remote sensing, visible or partially pre- and the presence of evidence for urban build-
served building structures are required. An ex- ing structures and coherent land surveying, it is
ample is the Roman Fulfinum (Omišalj), which currently the only location on the island of Cres
was identified by preserved building structures that can be considered an imperial Roman city.
(Čaušević-Bully and Valent 2015). Another fac- The work of regional researchers such as Al-
tor that makes archaeological remote sensing berto Fortis remains of particular interest due to 133
challenging is the high density of cultivated its value as a historical document, providing de-
plots around the town of Cres. While these form tailed accounts of the researchers’ impressions,
exceptional landscape features (Kremenić et al. as well as the natural and historical background.
2021), they obstruct the visibility of other re- Even if some details are debated today – like the
mains of past land use. Evidence of Roman land provenance of the epigraphic monument CIL
surveying only extends as far as just south of Cres III 3148 (10131) – his work remains a key source
(Doneus et al. 2024). If there were any further of information. Without Fortis, many valuable
Roman dry stone walls around Cres, they could archaeological relics would have been lost due
not be identified for the same reason. However, to the changing political landscape and the two
the absence of Roman land surveying around the world wars. The field of science continues to ben-
present-day town of Cres may also be related to efit from his efforts to this day.
the challenging terrain or the settlement’s lack of
a legal basis for land surveying. Acknowledgements The Roman Urbanisation of the Northern Adriatic Island of Cres
The paper presented here is part of the resear-
Conclusion ch project Osor beyond the myth, funded by
If we accept that the Tiberius inscription does the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): Grant-DOI:
not originate from Beli but was mistakenly at- 10.55776/I6039 and the project Mortar analyses of
tributed to it, we must ask where it actually archaeological monuments in the Mediterranean
comes from. Currently, all research results point climate regions, which is funded by the OeAD –
to Roman Osor, supporting the transformation Austria’s Agency for Education and Internationa-
of the idea of Osor as a main Roman town on the lisation (HR18/2024) and the Croatian Ministry
island of Cres into an archaeological fact. of Science, Education and Youth. For open access
purposes, the author has applied a CC BY pu-
One could argue that the current state of re- blic copyright license to any accepted manuscript
search on Beli and Cres does not allow for such version arising from this submission.
a statement. This would be correct if archaeolo- Geophysical measurements were conducted
gy relied solely on luck and time to find evidence by GeoSphere Austria. Tomislav Anić kindly gave
for an academic thesis, rather than employing a us a guided tour of Beli, helped us access various
variety of methodological approaches. Archae- properties in and around Beli, and helped during
ological finds, including epigraphic inscrip- our geophysical measurements, for which we are
tions, constitute only a portion of the sources most thankful. We are grateful to the reviewers
accessible to archaeologists. Another way to ob- whose comments and corrections helped us to im-
tain results is through the large-scale interpre- prove the final version of this article.
tation of landscape features. Considering the