This volume is a translation of the author’s Albanian publication Arkitektura në liri parë si refleks i strukturës sociale dhe botës shpirtërore (Academy of Sciences of Albania 2017). After several failed attempts to get the book professionally translated, Baçe decided to translate the book himself, a fact that is sometimes apparent in the text. A published volume in English on Illyrian archaeology is long overdue and most welcome, since much of the previous research on Albanian archaeology has appeared only in Albanian, Greek, French, and Italian. This publication provides a combination of a popular book and a scientific volume. The arguments are simplified in the text for the general reader, but all the data is presented fully in the endnotes, which include scholarly references, further explanations of the arguments, and relevant sections of ancient texts. The result is a well-balanced book that is a pleasure to read. It is comprehensible and well illustrated, with plentiful photographs, plan drawings, and reconstructions. Personally, I would have appreciated the inclusion of a map in each chapter with the excavation sites mentioned therein; even if many of them are well known to most scholars, some of the sites may be unfamiliar.

When discussing the development of monumental columnar architecture in Ancient Greece, traditional research has always cited the ancient authors claiming that said development was a linear evolutionary development from wooden posts to stone columns resulting in the perfect marble temples. However, the evolution of the Greek columnated building was not that simple, nor can it be said to be linear. A unified evolutionary development of the Greek architecture is a simplified explanation, for a much more complex phenomenon. Different materials were chosen in different regions, for different reasons in different periods. Most commonly local materials were used and we can see that in some regions the material was changed depending on the design of the building, where as in other regions the design was altered instead of the material. Much attention has traditionally been given to materials that are expensive today, such as marble, but research sometimes overlooks that the same material can be inexpensive if it is locally available. More common stones might also have been an expensive choice, were they not locally available. The choice of material can be a conscious choice rather than only a chronological development. The construction techniques used at these sites are interesting enough not always changed with the development of the architectural styles. A town could copy a new style from somewhere else, but the construction techniques and the materials often remained the same. One continued to construct as one always had in that location. My research aims to understand how and when changes were made in Greek columnar architecture and the correlation between regional styles, construction techniques and materials.

Columnated buildings have been used for millennia and the styles of the columns have changed over time. Often the changes in the local styles are triggered by events happening in the society, either locally or globally, when a society feels the need of defining themselves through their architecture against their neighbours or enemies. The local columnated style was often created as a manifestation of the societies self-identification or political power. The most known example of this is off course the Greek Doric and Ionic styles of architecture, which often but not always were hybridized with local traditions in pre-Roman Italy and the later Roman architecture. The mediated messages must have changed when the architecture was hybridized in these new cultural settings. We find columnated architecture all over pre-Roman Italy, but can we understand the messages being conveyed in these new contexts? Can we understand the difference in the meaning behind the monuments, when neighbouring towns use the same style for different reasons? In constructing Doric octagonal columns, the local society had chosen inspiration from a regional style in the Peloponnese, but seldom with the purpose of reconnecting themselves to the Archaic Peloponnese, but other messages must have been mediated. So, why did the local societies chose to adapt a less commonly used Greek style of octagonal columns? And can we understand what they wanted to communicate when single monuments were constructed in several different local pre-Roman societies? 

The development of the Greek columns was entirely dependent of the development of cult buildings. The transition from wooden post to stone columns was part of the larger development in early Greek monumental architecture, but the evolution of one single element did not stand alone, nor was it applied at the same time all over the Greek world. Technical development of roof tiles, stone walls and stone superstructure did change the design of colonnaded buildings. Not only did the buildings grow in dimensions, their layout was correspondingly altered. The interior wooden posts used in the apsidal buildings to carry the thatched roof, gradually moved out of the building becoming a prostyle or peripheral temple with stone columns carrying a tiled gable roof. A change in design that similarly altered the way people could move in and around the cult building. It is often discussed how the use of the sanctuary changed over time or how the technical development of architecture changed the layouts of the building. These questions have not commonly been combined, but the preferred choice of design was dependent on how the ancient people wanted to use their buildings. It is clear that different parts of the buildings developed in different periods and different regions. Several local styles were used before all different parts were fully developed and added together in the standardized Doric and Ionic temple around 500 BCE. The ancient people did choose which new inventions that befitted their own purpose in their sanctuary, creating their own local style of design or layout. There were likewise several column styles. They are hard to trace in wooden architecture, but when constructed in stone it is clear that round, fluted and polygonal columns were used side by side, in both time and place. The choice of materials, construction techniques and the decorative parts of the buildings seem to be a regional choice, rather than a chronological. In some Classical temples we can identify a conservative religious layout, long after the new techniques have been invented. A use of columns in locations no longer needed for structural reasons or a column shape no longer commonly used. Columns shape, design and placement can therefore illuminate when the ancient people chose a specific design for aesthetical or functions reasons.

Upon walking toward the entrance of the archaeological site in Delphi, one can today see three drums from an octagonal column of small dimensions. Even if the excavation circumstances of this column remain unpublished, the construction technique and the reconstruction of the column indicate that it has been an Archaic votive column. Polygonal columns are found in Greek architecture from the Geometric period and throughout the Archaic period, during the period when local architectural innovation and design where commonly used. During the 7th and early 6th century BC this developed into a local architectural style of Doric octagonal columns in the eastern Peloponnese, the costal islands and the southern Greek mainland. They were used in secular and religious buildings, as well as freestanding monuments. Most probably these towns made a manifestation of their own identity by using their own architectural style in the Panhellenic sanctuary of Delphi, as they had also done by constructing an Archaic treasury with octagonal columns in the Panhellenic sanctuary of Nemea.