STONE is founded on the fact that a society is fundamental to human existence and cultural development. The social approach to studying human culture has been long recognised; however, it is adding new, nuanced and strikingly modern perspectives (for example, intersectionality) to research, and it is absent from scholarship in the region, both in education and practice. Stećci are an embodiment of societal customs in the medieval plural W Balkans; they characterise a specific funerary phenomenon and are a manifestation of a unique amalgamation of ontological traditions, religions, artistic expressions, and scripts - a collection of related social evidence that can be assessed independently but must be studied holistically to move our understanding forward. Hence, STONE will employ social archaeology as an overarching approach to examine the stećci phenomenon. The crucial strength of social archaeology is in nuanced interpretations and greater relevance to lived experiences. STONE will consider transformations and continuities of society, identity, and ontology by studying social structure and complexities of identity interactions as they were enunciated through stećci cemeteries on a landscape, cemetery and a burial scale:
(1) on a landscape scale the natural settings have been turned into a meaningful social space, into a plurality-conveying-canvas where identities were created, exhibited, or disputed;
(2) on a cemetery scale, funerary practices and mortuary remains reflect social phenomena: the form and structure of a culture’s complexity are reflected in the form and structure of its mortuary practices, with the social position and identity of the deceased communicated through funerary treatment;
(3) on a burial scale, a tombstone itself, structure of the grave, funerary remains and material culture of an individual display additional axes of differentiation, but also the possibility to detect individuality, change and innovation.
Social structure allows for agency in small, repetitive practice that form indicative relations between people and things, eventually creating broader trajectories of culture. The proposed project aims to review established social concepts within funerary archaeology, and through social archaeological approach provide a profound insight into cultural encounters and innovative social interpretations of the past in a frontier region between medieval Christian Europe and the Islamic world.
