Landscape, Defense, and Symbolism: An Anthropological Interpretation of the Kolun Hillfort, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Elevated fortified settlements occupy some of the most prominent mountain landscapes of the western Balkans. Their locations were rarely accidental. Natural protection, broad visibility, access to building stone, and control of communication corridors repeatedly influenced where communities established permanent settlements. The Kolun Hillfort, near Mre？ica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, occupies a limestone plateau reaching approximately 1190 m above sea level (with the surveyed enclosure ranging from 1158 - 1191 m a.s.l.), a prominent but not exceptional elevation among fortified summits of the region. Field observations combined with UAV photogrammetry, RTK-GNSS surveying, digital elevation modelling, GIS analysis, and LiDAR documentation were used to examine the relationship between the natural landscape and the organization of the settlement. Particular attention is given to the elongated north–south orientation of the summit plateau, the alignment of the principal dry-stone walls with the ridge, the use of natural limestone escarpments as part of the defensive system, and field-observed visibility over the surrounding mountain terrain. The cultural-historical attribution of Kolun to the Illyrian Iron Age, with probable later reuse, follows surface morphology and typological comparison with regional hillforts and is treated throughout this paper as provisional pending excavation and absolute dating; the label ‘Illyrian’ itself is used here as a conventional archaeological shorthand rather than as a claim about the ethnic self-identification of the site’s builders. Rather than viewing Kolun solely as a defensive structure, this paper interprets it as the result of deliberate landscape selection. The combination of topography, geology, construction material, visibility, and spatial organization is interpreted as reflecting careful planning by a socially organized community—a hypothesis consistent with, but not yet confirmed by, excavated evidence. Comparison with other Illyrian hillforts (Daorson, Varvaria, Asseria, and Meteon), based on published literature and a defined set of comparison variables rather than new fieldwork, suggests that similar principles influenced the selection and development of fortified mountain settlements throughout the western Balkans. Building on these observations, the paper proposes a five-component conceptual framework—the Kolun Model of Illyrian Landscape Selection—linking landscape, topography, human decision-making, architectural response, and cultural landscape, and offers