Gaffney Vincent, Kirigin Branko, Petrić Marinko, Vujnović Nikša. Projekt Jadranski otoci: Veze, trgovina i kolonizacija 6000 pr.K. - 600 god.: Svezak 1: Arheološka baština otoka Hvara, Hrvatska

Tempus Reparatum, 1997. — 338 p. — (BAR International Series 660).When, after more then ten years of work, the results of a study are finally published, the product is not simply a list of scientific facts but a springboard for further research and new scientific endeavours. That is an achievement that speaks for itself. I would, however, like to say something about this particular publication; about how, by whom and why it was made.
This book emerged slowly, the result of many kilometres of travel, on foot, over the rocky high lands and almost inaccessible hills and fields of the island of Hvar. These journeys were often made under the burning sun and the dull blast of the depressing scirocco wind. During this period archaeologists, historians, geographers, geologists, and architects gathered to participate in a joint scientific venture centred on the Stari Grad field - the plain of St. Stephen (the patron saint of the island) as it was called in the middle ages - where the extremely rare, and probably best preserved, Greek land division in the Mediterranean still survives.
These people, from 1982, gathered around Branko Kirigin, archaeologist and the principal force behind the Project. It was he, his colleagues and friends from Hvar and Split, and later archaeologists from Zadar, Zagreb, Belgrade and Ljubljana, and later from England and Canada, who founded “Project Hvar - Archaeology of a Mediterranean Landscape” in 1988.
The project had adequate inspiration for its work in the research and published works of the many well known scientists from Hvar - Petar Nisiteo, Šime Ljubić, Grga Novak, Niko Duboković-Nadalini, Marin Zaninović, Nikša Petrić and others. Starting work on the Stari Grad plain, the team began to spread across the whole island: its settlements, caves, fields, smaller islands, and even touching the bottom of the sea. As the team grew, the project’s work was enriched and expanded. It started with the Greek landscape on the Stari Grad plain and travelled back to encompass prehistoric sites and forward to include the Roman and Early Medieval periods. The project also began to incorporate other islands as its aims expanded and in 1992 it was re-titled “The Adriatic Islands Project”. The team evolved a series of academic goals and specific research methodologies. Of particular relevance to this volume are the procedures developed for general sites and monuments survey, which included visiting and registering sites, identifying them, recording their state of preservation, extent, status, precise position and so forth. The research included archival and bibliographic studies, field work with a standardised system of gathering data, computer data management and the eventual incorporation of all the data within a GIS (Geographical Information System).
The project has involved several important institutions both from Croatia and abroad; the Archaeological Museum at Split, the Centre for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of the Island of Hvar, the Departments of Archaeology from the Universities of Split and Zagreb, Ljubljana, Bradford, London, Reading, Birmingham and the Royal Ontario Museum from Toronto in Canada. Thus it became a truly international, multidisciplinary project.