Pirivatric: There is no evidence of a connection between the Albanians living in Kosovo today and the Dardanians

Senior Research Fellow at the Byzantine Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and President of the Serbian Committee for Byzantine Studies, Srdjan Pirivatric, tells Kosovo Online that there is no evidence or connection between Albanians living in Kosovo today and the Dardanians who inhabited the area in late antiquity. He also stated that there is no link between the Roman province of Dardania and the modern concept of Kosovo and Metohija, which is of more recent origin.

A group of citizens in Pristina initiated a petition to rename Kosovo as Dardania, and in response, Pirivatric explains that there is no continuity between the Romanized population of the former Roman province of Dardania and the current Albanian population in Kosovo and Metohija. He emphasizes that, based on existing sources, such continuity cannot be proven or even reasonably hypothesized.

“The Dardanians were an ancient Balkan people whose origins are not well understood. In their earliest beginnings, they might be connected to populations from Asia Minor, but this link is not clearly established. In late antiquity, the population was Romanized or partially Romanized, but it disappeared with the arrival of the Slavs and the subsequent Slavicization of the area, as evidenced by corresponding toponyms. There are no traces of Albanian toponyms or proto-Albanian vocabulary in the area. Therefore, no evidence exists in written records, archaeological findings, or linguistic sources, language as a monument, of any continuity between the Dardanians and today’s Albanians. This is a political construct, and history and scientific historiography have long since rendered a verdict on the matter, although it tends to be forgotten,” Pirivatric stated.

As he explains, the Kingdom of Dardania covered a territory that was later approximately encompassed by the Roman province of Dardania, however, he notes that Roman emperors often determined the boundaries of provinces based on administrative and practical political needs, rather than continuity with a previous political structure that they had overthrown, conquered, and integrated into their state organization.

“More precisely, we can speak more about the Roman province of Dardania than the boundaries of the Dardanian Kingdom. The Dardanians, at least at the time of their conquest by the Romans, are considered a branch of the Illyrians, located in an area of interaction between the Illyrians and the Thracians. The Roman province of Dardania was bounded by the Western and Great Morava rivers and the Drim River in Kosovo, extending south to the Sar Mountains, with its capital in Skopje. Therefore, it is interesting that there is an attempt to link the modern concept of Kosovo and Metohija to a Roman province whose capital is not located within today’s Kosovo and Metohija,” Pirivatric concluded.