The Settlement of Serbs on Balkans and the First State
	Introduction
	Paleolithic - second period of the Stone Age
	Neolithic - latest period of the Stone Age
	The Bronze Age
	The Iron Age
	The Roman Period
	The Arrival of Slavs, the Adoption of Christianity and the Serbian State of Stefan Nemanja
	Chronological table
The Serbian State of the Nemanjićes 1199-1321
The Serbian State of the Nemanjićes 1321-1371
The fall of the Serbian Empire1371-1389

The Settlement of Serbs on Balkans and the First State

The Iron Age

The Iron Age covers a period of 1000 years - from 1000 B.C. to the first century A.D., named thus by science because iron was the dominant metal in the working of weaponry, implements and other objects. Frequent popular movements were characteristic to this period. This was the age of the "people with swords" and the period of frequent clashes, destruction, but also of the formation of tribes. The Iron Age is the last period of prehistory. Thanks to Grecian and Roman writers we know the names of individual tribes in the Balkan peninsula.

The wide use of iron did not largely disturb the cultural development of people on our soil. Changes took place with the penetration of tribes from Caucasus and southern Russia. Science links this penetration first with the Traco-Cimmerians (800-700 B.C.) and subsequently with the Scythes (600-500 B.C.). The merging of indigenous populations with newcomers over a long time period lead to the development of tribes.

People built their settlements generally on elevations suitable for fortification and defense. The folk today call these places castle ruins. Burial took place in clan tumuli, with many weapons, jewelry and ceramics. Research on the tumuli tells us that tribes underwent stratification, and that, probably, tribal chiefs existed. Some tumuli did not differ from others only by their place and size, but also by the objects put in them. They were full of homemade, but also imported weapons, and other items made of gold and silver. One of the most important sites of this period is a large necropolis with several thousand tumuli at Glasinac (central Bosnia). This group was developed also in Herzegovina, Metohia and northern Albania. Finds from tumuli provide evidence of extensive trade with the Greeks. Roads lead through Macedonia and from the eastern Adriatic after the Greek colonization.

This marks the beginning of Hellenistic influence on the old Balkan tribes, which ended with the arrival of Celts at the beginning of the 3rd century B.C.

The ethnic belonging of cultural groups in the Balkans can be established from the remains of their material culture and information provided by Grecian and Roman writers. Illyrians inhabited the western parts of the Balkans, and the Glasinac culture could be ascribed to them, while west of the Iskera and Struma rivers lived Tracians. Between them were Triballis and Dardanians, which ancient writers identified with the Thracians and Illyrians.

Fibulae, decorative and functional pins, were widely used in the Iron Age. The oldest were arch-shaped with two loops and a leg in the shape of either a triangle, trapezoid of the "beotia shield" or circle. Subsequently, arched shapes appeared with starry adornments, stylized snakeheads etc.