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Illyrians has come to refer to a broad, ill-defined[1] "Indo-European"[2] group of peoples who inhabited the western Balkans (Illyria, roughly from central Albania to southern Pannonia) and even possibly Messapia in Southern Italy (if the Messapian language is to be considered an Illlyrian dialect[3]). Illyrians[4] were part[5] of the Hallstatt culture.[6][7][8][9][10] In theory, Illyrians are defined as speakers of the Illyrian languages, but since the latter is practically unknown, this entails the danger of a circular definition. The existence of a broad "Illyrian" ethnic identity in the past is uncertain, and some argue that the ethnonym Illyrioi came to be applied to this large group of peoples by the ancient Greeks, Illyrioi having perhaps originally designated only a single people that came to be widely known to the Greeks due to proximity.[11][12] Indeed, such a people known as the Illyrioi have occupied a small and well-defined part of the south Adriatic coast, around Skadar Lake astride the modern frontier between Albania and Montenegro. The name may then have expanded and come to be applied to ethnically different peoples such as the Liburni, Delmatae, Iapodes, or the Pannonii. Little more can be said of the languages of Illyria than that they were probably centum dialects of Indo-European. They may have been linked with the adjacent Thracian language by an intermediate convergence area or dialect continuum. The position of the equally fragmentarily attested Venetic language with relation to Illyrian is uncertain. Venetic also appears to be a centum dialect.
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