Dr Ivan Mirnik and dr Ante Rendić-Miočević will give a lecture at 6.45 p.m. on November 28 in Split City Museum (Papalićeva 1). This lecture about extensive joint excavations carried out in Diocletian’s Palace between 1968 and 1975 is included in the programme of the conference Diocletian’s Palace in the works of Adam, Clérisseau and Cassas.
Abstract Recommended by Professor Duje Rendić-Miočević, Ivan Mirnik was invited by Sheila McNally to join the excavation team working in Diocletian’s Palace in Split in 1969, the second year of the project. He also returned to the exavations in 1970, 1971 and 1972, with brief visits to the Palace in the following years. Duje and Ante Rendić-Miočević occasionally paid a visit to the excavations to keep informed about the highly rewarding results.
It was a great privilege not only to be able to excavate at the most representative Roman monument in Croatia, but also to participate at excavations led by such an experienced and trained archaeologist as Sheila McNally. The team included many students from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis and some Croatian students, but there were also experts from various other countries. Some of the visitors and consultants to the site were indeed eminent scholars: Wilbur Brown, Sandor Bököny, Mario Del Chiaro, John Joseph Wilkes, John Ward Perkins, Ljubiša Popović etc. And of course, present were Jerko and Tomislav Marasović, the good spirits of Split and its Palace.
The results of these excavations were published in ten volumes, mostly in English, some in a parallel Croatian edition. The American team explored the imperial residential area of the Palace in nine sectors; there were also some minor soundings in the southern and northern half of the Palace. Sector No. 1 was situated on the north-eastern side of Diocletian’s Mausoleum, on both sides of Bulić Street; sector No. 2 encompassed three halls of the substructions with fallen in vaults, now reconstructed, next to the eastern wall, in Lukačić Street; Sector No. 3 was situated within the south-eastern corner tower; Sector No. 4 was situated in Sever Street, next to the southern façade; Sector No. 5 was next to Sector No. 1, at Bulić Street No. 4; Sector No. 6 lay at the intersection of Kraj Svetog Duje and Bulić Street; Sector No. 7 was a deep shaft south of the Triclinium; Sector No. 8 covered the south-western corner of the temenos area of the Mausoleum and finally there was also Sector No. 9 at Sever Street, under the Slavija Hotel.
Ivan Mirnik graduated from the First Grammar School in Zagreb in 1961, then studied architecture (1961-1963) at the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb and finally graduated in archaeology as a single subject (VIth Group) at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb in 1969. From 1970 to 1973 he was employed as archaeologist-conservator at the Institute of Protection of Cultural Heritage of the Republic of Croatia in Zagreb. From 1973 to his retirement in 2011 he worked at the Zagreb Archaeological Museum Numismatic Department. Having finished the post-graduate study of librarianship, documentation, information sciences and museology at the Zagreb University, he obtained the MA degree in 1974 with the thesis ”The Tradition of numismatic research in Croatia”. In 1978 he was nominated senior curator, and obtained the degree of Ph. D. at the University of London Institute of Archaeology with the doctoral thesis “Coin Hoards in Yugoslavia”, which was partly published in 1981 in Oxford. In 1982 he became museum adviser and in 1984 scientific adviser (with the rank of university professor). He took part in various archaeological excavations and research projects both in the country and abroad (Vindonissa in Switzerland, Berbourg in Luxemburg). He has published more than 400 books and original scientific/scholarly and professional papers on various topics (archaeology, numismatics, history, protection of monuments, genealogy, heraldry), of which three books and 70 newspaper articles were published abroad.
Ante Rendić-Miočević studied history of art and archaeology at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb. He was curator at the Archaeological Museum in Split (1970-1973) and the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb (from 1973), firstly as a curator, then senior curator and finally as a museum adviser at the Museum’s Graeco-Roman department. He was director of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb (1984-2012), president of the Croatian Archaeological Society (1993-2001), senior lecturer at the department of history of art at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka (2005-2010: Greek and Roman Iconography, Greek and Roman Art in Croatia). He is the author of more than 230 scholarly or professional papers and essays, mostly related to Greek and Roman sculpture, especially Roman provincial sculpture and epigraphy. Since 1998 he has been a member of the Scientific Committee of the LIMC (Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae) in Basel. Since 2002 he has been an associate member of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin (DAI, Deutschen Archäolgischen Instituts). He has taken part in various archaeological excavations and research projects, mostly in Croatia, and participated in many conferences in Croatia and other countries.