WP1: Associated settlements

Finding the associated settlements is the first and key question concerning the stećci theme. Where did people who are buried under stećci live? The locations of stećci cemeteries were implicated in complex and changing processes of evolving ritual and social practices within inhabited landscapes that were fluctuating in population density, routes, settlement patterns and territorial organisation. Although the W Balkans is filled with stećci cemeteries, their associated or coexistent settlements are mostly unidentified. Vego (1957) described several medieval Bosnian villages, markets, and towns in his seminal historiographical book, however, those or their medieval components are challenging to trace. A study of any settlement related to stećci cemeteries has not been performed yet. STONE sees the memory of the place extending from a burial site to the associated settlement. The locations of the cemeteries can assist with tracing them: the stećci cemeteries form a network, a so-called 'landscape of the dead', based on which a 'landscape of the living' could be derived regressively.

The settlement dynamics in Hum will be investigated primarily through a spatial dynamic of medieval land-use, and corroborated through historical information, epigraphy on the stećci of two župas (Popovo & Rudine), and scientific sampling during the excavations of two settlement sites (sites Zavala and Predojevići). (Social) anthropological and ethnographical knowledge will assist with the reconstruction of land use, including field systems and quarries. Employing landscape and environmental archaeology, the project will identify the locations of settlements associated with the stećci tombstones; examine the development of cemeteries in relation to settlements; the relationship between settlements, cemeteries, communications, and their impact on the landscape; as well as the availability, relationship between, and management of environmental resources (water resources, stone quarries, agricultural land, woodland). The stećci associated settlement patterns will be reconstructed using the historical data from Vego, archival data and mid-15^th C Ottoman tax registers, defters. The palimpsestic nature of cultural landscape will be categorised by implementing Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) developed in the UK, adapted for the W Balkans. Using HLC, we will classify the land-use and communications as a landscape approach to understanding stećci.