SOLMUS · Social Landscapes as Multicultural Spaces: Stećci in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-09-01 → 2021-03-03
- EU contribution
- €195,455
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-RI
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Social Landscapes as Multicultural Spaces: Stećci in Bosnia and Herzegovina
This project studies medieval funerary culture in the western Balkan, specifically in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), and is focused on one medieval administrative unit, on župa Dabar. The stećci gravestones are a plural heritage that developed in the region with high religious, ethnic, and cultural diversity. They appear in great numbers: more than 70000 tombstones are scattered in the countries of BiH, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia. Their quantitative character is the main reason for their understudieness from an archaeological perspective. This heritage is very important for the advancement of future Europe and its relations to the plural cultural coexistence within it. The exploration of stećci could bring information on how such a diverse population managed to live together in peace. Not only that, but the plural communities in the medieval Western Balkans also developed a shared commemorative heritage that lasted for almost a millennium. The overall objective of the project is to introduce these monuments to a wider European and global academic public and also to the general public, and show how an exotic heritage does not need to be searched for in distant places. The results from the project will add a new perspective to the narratives of the nascence of modern Europe and will advance the discipline of archaeology in southeastern Europe.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Stećci, the medieval tombstones, are expressions of religious belief, identity, politics and social ideology. They synthesise the historical, chronological, cultural and religious components of the medieval Western Balkans. There are over 60 000 stećci scattered around Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the country that epitomises long-standing plurality. Through these monuments identities were enunciated, thus offering a rare opportunity to investigate the archaeo-historic growth of medieval SE Europe. SOLMUS adopts an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to study medieval funerary archaeology, with the aim to understand the social life of medieval Bosnian society that left us stećci. SOLMUS will model ‘inter/intra group’ interactions in medieval BiH by integrating principles from landscape archaeology, remote sensing, digital humanities, and the scientific and theoretical approaches of social archaeology with medieval iconography and epigraphy, therefore bringing an entirely new understanding of European medieval archaeology. The proposed project will synthesise complementary datasets from the archaeological and historical record, often treated separately. By defining the Past as shared, complex and nuanced, can archaeology stimulate new narratives for social integration? What was/is the regional impact of the peripheral East and the role of multiculturalism on the European Past? Dr Čaval is an experienced researcher, focusing on the archaeology of religion, historical archaeology and cultural astronomy. She will enhance her research and employability through training in theoretical, methodological and practical knowledge in social archaeology, as well as skills in SNA, RTI and GIS analyses (beneficiary), and medieval epigraphy and iconography (secondment). By bridging theoretical perspectives and scientific methods, she will provide innovative perspectives on European multiculturalism through its relationship with the medieval heritage of the Western Balkans.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE UNIVERSITY OF READING · ReadingCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/797881
- https://research.reading.ac.uk/social-landscapes-multicultural-spaces/
Data: CORDIS, © European Union