of the settlement can be possibly dated to the collapse of the Corinthian tyranny when the settlement was possibly refounded as Apollonia by a faction which opposed the Corinthian establishment. The name Apollonia appears in 588 BC and is a reference to Apollo. It was one of 24 cities in the Ancient Greek world known as Apollonia. It was distinguished from other cities named Apollonia by being referred to as Ἀπολλωνία κατ᾿ Ἐπίδαμνον (Apollonia kat' Epidamnon) or Ἀπολλωνία πρὸς Ἐπίδαμνον (Apollonia pros Epidamnon), meaning "Apollonia towards Epidamnos," in reference to the nearby Greek colony of Epidamnos. History Pre-foundation period The site of Apollonia occupied a strategic position within southern Illyria because it was located at the crossroads of a prehistoric trade route, which both linked the eastern Adriatic coast with the interior, and the northern Adriatic with the Aegean. The route into the interior, which was the more valuable because it permitted overland travel elsewhere in the region, existed before the arrival of Greek colonists, and later it became the Roman Via Egnatia. Before the foundation of Apollonia, the Greek goods that moved inland along this route were very few. The presence of indigenous Illyrian human remains recovered from a burial mound in the necropolis of Apollonia indicates that the initial inhabitation of the region of Apollonia began during the Early Bronze Age. The presence of the Early Bronze Age tumuli shows that Illyrians viewed Apollonia as a part of their territory. The earliest EBA tumulus dates to 2679±174 calBCE (2852-2505 calBCE). These burial mounds belong to the southern expression of the Adriatic-Ljubljana culture (related to Cetina culture) which moved southwards along the Adriatic from the northern Balkans. The same community built similar mounds in Montenegro (Rakića Kuće) and northern Albania (Shtoj). A part of the grave finds of the Adriatic tumuli included locally produced violin idols which were influenced by trends observed in the Early Cycladic I (Grotta-Pelos) culture in southern Greece. Surface surveys of the region suggest that there was very little general use of the area until the colonial establishment. The first post-Mycenaean Greek mariners and traders in the Adriatic were the Euboeans, who interpreted the foreign coast of this sea in ways that were confortable to them. It has been conjectured that at the site of Apollonia, in particular, those early Greek seafarers encountered a deserted landscape with abandoned tumuli interpreting them as monuments to their