Bronze Age Hillforts around Rovinj on the western coast of the Istrian Peninsula and their pottery

Since the 19th century, the interest of scholars and lovers of antiquity has been focused on the prehistoric hillfort settlements, also known as gradine, castellieri or kastelliere, on the Istrian peninsula. Several hundred of these fortified settlements, located on the tops of the countless hills of the Karst, are registered today. However, only a few of them have been explored through systematic archaeological research. The site that is currently best investigated and excavated with modern methods is the Gradina of Monkodonja near the small port town of Rovinj on the west coast of Istria, which is dated to the developed Early and to the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age. The research has led to numerous new findings, for example regarding chronology, settlement organisation and long-distance contacts. But they have also raised new questions. Given the size of Gradina Monkodonja, with an outer fortification wall almost 1 km long, and its prominent location, it was considered by the excavators to be the centre within a settlement system consisting of a large central settlement and various smaller satellite settlements. However, not much is known about these smaller, presumed satellite settlements to date - especially with regard to their chronology. Therefore, it is especially unclear whether they actually lived at the same time as the presumed central settlement of Monkodonja and whether a hierarchical system of hillforts existed in the Bronze Age. New research, funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea and supported by the Archaeological Museum of Istria in Pula and the Rovinj Heritage Museum, has been aiming to explore the system of hillforts around Rovinj since 2016. One step in the investigation is aimed at obtaining new data on the chronological classification of the smaller hillforts. Significant new results come from Gradina Monbrodo, which shed new light on the above-mentioned questions about the settlement system around Rovinj. With a view to the pottery spectrum of Monkodonja, we will discuss some previously unpublished ceramic finds in this paper.