In his monumental study of Greek Pins, Jacobsthal examined a number of pins from Jugoslavia. These he found to be very different from the Greek series and in the present paper some four hundred pins have been studied in the hope of providing an extension to his work. Since pins were in use before fibulae and were conservative in their forms, many in the period under review in Jugoslavia, the 8th–2nd centuries B.C., are survivals from or elaborations of Bronze Age types. In this they differ from the fibulae which are nearly all borrowings from contemporary southern and western neighbours and this gives the pins their particular interest.

The dating of objects, including pins, has been placed on a firm footing in recent years by the detailed study of some of the more important Iron Age cemeteries, and in this paper the periods distinguished at Vače (Slovenia), Glasinac (Bosnia) and Nin (Dalmatia) will normally be used in preference to the more distant and often unrelated East Alpine Hallstatt terminology.

Distinctive Bronze Age pin series come from neighbouring Greece, Hungary, Austria, and Italy and their relative influence in Jugoslavia can be assessed. In the Late Bronze Age, East Alpine types were found throughout Jugoslavia, and Hungarian influence was strong in the inland river basins of the Lower Save, Drave and Danube; it also penetrated into Bosnia.