Before Marija Gimbutas began her archaeological excavation projects starting in the 1960s, the prehistoric cultures of ancient Europe had been studied since the nineteenth century. But this scholar had vision and gained a grasp on the organic whole of the various regional cultures for which she coined the overarching name “Old Europe.” The cultures of Old Europe have a great many features in common that characterise their fabric as an ancient civilisation. The findings of Marija Gimbutas resulted in the identification of Old Europe as the oldest model of an ancient civilisation.

The territories where Albanians now live were included geographically in Old Europe on its western side, but very little attention has been paid to the role of the ancestors of the Albanians in this civilisation. Gimbutas wrote, “unfortunately, the isolation of Albania for half a century created a visible gap in archaeological research; the information available is insufficient.”
Since 1991, with the fall of Communism, Albania has opened up completely. The authors of this contribution, follow in the footsteps of Gimbutas and her scholarly work with the intention of clarifying the origins of the Albanians from a mingling of two cultural mainstreams, that of Old Europe and another whose bearers were Indo-European migrants to the region.