The Delegation of the European Union in Tirana shared Wednesday images showing the village of Lin, saying “this 8,000-year-old site is uncovering the roots of European farming and the dynamics of prehistoric land use.”

A settlement of around 30-40 houses, built with oak, pine, and large juniper trees, and home to approximately 400-800 people, is shedding light on how society transitioned from hunter-gatherers to farmers. Inhabited between 6200 BC and 4000 BC and located in Lin, Pogradec, this site is revealing how people lived around 8,000 years ago in Neolithic lake dwellings known as palafittes. A Swiss-Albanian archaeological expedition has confirmed that the site is one of Europe’s oldest lakeside settlements. It is also one of the first places where agriculture spread to Europe from the Near East, initially through the Mediterranean and then northward across the continent.

The head of the project, Professor Albert Hafner from the University of Bern, explains that this does not mean the site was continuously inhabited for 2,000 years. Instead, several villages were built at this location over time. “The population used about 300 trees to construct the settlement, which amounts to an entire forest. The main aim of the project is to understand how agriculture developed. Organic layers in wetland archaeological sites preserve materials much better, providing crucial information about how agriculture spread to Europe. We are tracing a pivotal moment in this transition,” he says, as his team continues an underwater excavation in Lake Ohrid near Pogradec.

The research is funded by the European Union under the EXPLO project, which aims to explore the dynamics and causes of prehistoric land use changes in the cradle of European farming.

“We knew the region had significant potential for archaeological research into the origins of agriculture. In archaeological terms, this is a major project, involving four professors, three countries, the universities of Bern, Oxford, and Thessaloniki, and more than 200 people, including archaeologists, divers, and technical support staff. The research requires substantial resources- boats, vehicles, even setting up a laboratory – and it could not happen without sufficient funding. Projects of this scale are only possible with grants like these,” Professor Hafner says.

Similar settlements in Switzerland are already UNESCO World Heritage Sites, though they are 2,000 years younger. Professor Hafner believes the Lin site also has this potential but suggests that, since Lake Ohrid is already a UNESCO World Heritage Site, “it would make more sense to integrate this site into the existing World Heritage project for the lake.”

Ceramics and bones have also been found during the excavations, where several students from Germany, Austria, France, and Albania have joined forces, uniting a European team to preserve these prehistoric findings in Europe.

The EXPLO project has received funding from the European Reserach Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

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The leaders of the expedition acquainted Gjinushi on the work done for the processing of the archaeological material, the data obtained and the efforts to secure and preserve all the scientific information through a standardized documentation.

The “Lin 3” underwater research project is a collaboration between the Archaeological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of Albania and the University of Bern (Switzerland).

Professors Albert Hafner and Ilir Gjipali reconfirmed that Lini’s settlement is a palafit settlement and lies mostly under water and partly on land, as a result of fillings that have occurred over thousands of years from deposits of soil eroded from the surrounding hills.

The results of the research of the previous years (2021, 2022 and 2023) and the laboratory analyzes carried out at the University of Bern in Switzerland, as well as those in collaboration with the University of Oxford in England, showed that the palafit settlement “Lin 3 ” is the oldest settlement of this type in Europe.

The 2024 excavations mark the completion of the first phase of the project in “Lin 3”. The four-week excavations on the ground (June 24 – July 21, 2024) are considered very successful for the amount and variety of archaeological material (pottery, stone tools, bone, plant remains, bones of domestic and wild animals, etc.), which are the object of ongoing study by project specialists. The second phase of this season’s excavations involves underwater excavations inside the lake, which will continue for another four weeks, until August 18.

The excavations of this year’s Albanian-Swiss expedition are focusing on the further recognition of the extent of the settlement, the duration, the material and spiritual culture of the Neolithic inhabitants, the complexity of the constructions of these lake settlements; as well as in aspects of the agricultural and livestock economy and the cultural and chronological relations with the settlements of this type in the surrounding territories (in the Korça basin, Northern Greece and North Macedonia).

Meanwhile, there is being prepared the archaeological documentation necessary for its protection and declaration as an archaeological area by the Ministry of Economy, Culture and Innovation. /p.s./

The Italian Embassy announced that it paid the bill after being ordered to do so by the Premier Meloni, who spent a few days of her vacation in Albania.

“On the instructions of the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, we have settled the bill left unpaid by a group of Italian tourists at a restaurant in the city of Berat,” the Embassy said in a release.

“Italians respect the rules and pay their debts, and we hope that such episodes will not be repeated. It should be noted that the payment was settled through personal funds of Prime Minister Meloni through the Embassy,” the statement reads.

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The National Institute of Cultural Heritage said today that after getting acquainted with the field and in direct cooperation with the municipality of Belsh, it is committed to continue the whole process, to further discover the “Roman Structure” and to obtain every previously unidentified information for this area.

“The work has started with the process of cleaning and marking the area where the archaeological excavation will be carried out, in cooperation with UT students, the Faculty of History and Philology and the Department of Cultural Heritage and Archeology,” said National Institute of Cultural Heritage in a post on social networks.

According to the Institute, this special discovery will be an added value for the Belsh area, bringing deeper knowledge of the layers of history, as well as enrichment of the area with a new archaeological settlement.

This settlement is in the village of Rrasa, only 3 km away from the town of Belshi. In addition to the ruins of a Roman thermal building of the second century, there has been found the presence of ancient bones. These bones prove that in this area there was early living and civilization.

The settlement of the second century, is a resort and residence of caravans of the time and such so far in Albania have been identified in Butrint and Dyrrah, present-day Durrës./p.s./

According to the report of the 2022 budget, the stock of arrears of local self-government units at the end of the first 6 months of 2021 decreased by about ALL 0.3 billion, compared to about ALL 6.9 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2021.

While the stock of arrears at the end of 2021 was about ALL 0.5 billion compared to about ALL 7.1 billion in the same period of 2020.

In the context of strengthening financial discipline to prevent the creation of arrears, the government is paying special attention to the settlement of arrears by local self-government units.

The Ministry of Finance and Economy-MFE in cooperation with local self-government units is implementing an action plan for the settlement of arrears.

“In 2022, the implementation of the plan for the settlement of arrears by local self-government units will continue to be monitored periodically, until their full settlement,” MFE announced. //a.i/