Damastion (Ancient Greek: Δαμάστιον) was an ancient city in the area of central Balkans, known for its silver coins dating back to the 4th century BC. It is attested only in Strabo who says that the city had silver-mines and locates it in Illyria.[1][2][3] The ancient author reports that the city was under the authority of the Illyrian tribes of Dyestes and Enchelei-Sesarethii,[4] and that Aegina colonized it.[3] At 356–358 B.C. the mines came under the control of Macedon.[5]
The exact site of Damastion is not yet identified with certainty. Various sites in Serbia,[6] North Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania have been considered as the location of this ancient town.
Damastion was issuing silver in the form of coins bearing the head of Apollo on the obverse and a sacrificial tripod with the inscription『ΔΑΜΑΣΤΙΝΩΝ』on the reverse. These coins have been found in many places in the Balkans, mainly in southern Serbia, north-eastern Kosovo, eastern North Macedonia, west Bulgaria, Shkodër in Albania and as far as Romania, Trieste and Corfu. They are dated to the 4th century BC.
Most attempts to locate Damastion are based on the study of the coins and their distribution. One researcher, Friedrich Imhoof-Blumer, endeavoured to find modern derivatives of the name and assumed that Damesi, a village in southern Albania, might have been Damastion.[7] There are a number of other scholars who believe its location might have been somewhere near present-day Resen in ancient Paeonia, in modern-day North Macedonia.[8][9][10]
The most recent location proposed is the Kale-Krševica site, southeast of the town of Vranje in southern Serbia, where 5th-century BC foundations of an Ancient Greek urban town have been unearthed.[11][12][13] Archeologist Petar Popović from the Institute of Archeology in Belgrade claimed in 2009 that Kale-Krševica might be the site of Damastion, although by his estimates only 6% of the site has been excavated so far.[13]
The Illyrian state controlled the mines of Damastion at least from the 5th century BC.[14] The silver mines of Damastion increased the interest of the Greeks in Illyrian territory.[15] In the 431 BC Greeks from Aegina had colonised the city.[3]
The silver mines of Damastion were close to Dassaretia, a region centered around Lake Lychnidus (present-day Lake Ohrid).[16] Damastion began to mint coinage from the end of the 5th century BC. Although the site of the mines of Damastion remains still unlocated, the rise of the earliest remarkable Illyrian coinage in the lakeland coincided with the earliest known important consolidation of Illyrian military power in the same region.[17] In 4th century BC the city, and its inhabitants Damastini, were subject most likely to the Illyrian king Bardylis.[17][18][19][20] The circulation of the coins of Damastion included Dardania (today's Kosovo and its surrounding areas) up to the west, to the southern Adriatic coast.[21]
The city and its silver mines were most likely captured by Philip II of Macedon after he defeated Illyrian king Bardyllis.[22][23] At the time of Alexander the Great's Balkan campaign, in particular in Illyria, the autonomous minting of Damastion ceased, meanwhile Macedonian coins of Alexander and his father Philip II appear in the region, suggesting that the kings of Macedon have set up a unified monetary system by capturing all the metal resources available in the region.[24]
The coinage of Damastion lasted until about 280 BC, or until the Celtic invasion of the Balkans, when the region was destabilized.[17]
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