The cultural mish-mesh of Issa: In pursuit of acculturation dynamics in one of the latest Greek settelements
Issa was one of the latest Greek settlements, a small, but regionally prominent polis that was established during the first half of the 4th c. BCE on the island of Vis in mid-Dalmatia. It lived its heyday during the Hellenistic period as a stable community, one of the important nodes of traffic in the Adriatic Sea, and a strong influence on different facets of cultural development of its surroundings. The cultural identities of this city and its inhabitants were formed in the acculturation processes through interaction between the newly-arrived Greeks and indigenous communities, as well as through dynamics cultural contacts via networks of seaborne connectivity. This shifts the interpretations of Issaean identities away from the concept of “Hellenisation” towards ideas of coexistence and the sphere of cultural interaction, with an emphasis on active involvement of all participants in the creation and changes of multifacet identities of this new multicultural and hybrid—Issaean—culture.