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Archaeological Excavations at the Stari grad Ivanec site in 2009
Juraj Belaj
orcid.org/0000-0001-8953-3820
; Institute of Archaeology, Zagreb, Croatia
Filomena Sirovica
orcid.org/0000-0001-6662-8915
Abstract
In 2009 the Institute of Archaeology, again at the initiative of the Town of Ivanec, conducted the eighth stage of archaeological conservation excavations at the Stari grad site in Ivanec. This was a continuation of excavations which have been conducted by the Institute of Archaeology since the year 1998. The objective of the 2009 campaign was to excavate a rectangular tower located in the northern part of Stari grad, and to prepare it for presentation. At the same time, the area between the Northern Tower and the previously excavated church of St. John the Baptist was excavated all the way to sterile soil. In the excavated tower, under several different layers, massive, 110–175 cm thick walls of an older structure were unearthed, which consisted of (at least) two rooms. The rooms were attached to one another and ran along the same axis. The eastern room was somewhat narrower from the outside, but – surprisingly – it was wider from the inside. The assumption that it might indeed be another older church is substantiated by an ever larger number of children’s graves found to the south, along the outside walls, but also an ever larger number of graves unearthed in the inside of the church. The church stretches approximately in the direction East-West, but its orientation matches neither the near-by church of St. John, nor the foundations of the tower. Nevertheless, it matches the orientation of the graves found alongside it. The large number of graves and the orientation of their burials, as well as the fact that up to the present day no graves were found that had been cross-cut by the foundations of this church, along with individual finds found in the graves inside the church itself, that are typical of the Bijelo brdo culture period (S rings), suggest that we are dealing with the remains of an even older, Romanesque, church. The church’s constituent parts – capitals – were built in the foundations of the Gothic church of St. John as spolia. They could – with reserve – be dated to the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries. North-east of the church, another 80 cm wide wall was identified, stretching in the direction SE–NW. This could be an older defense wall surrounding the church. In 2009, a total of 76 graves were excavated. A smaller number of graves (27 of them) were unearthed between the tower and St. John’s church, while a larger number were found within the tower, particularly south of the foundations of the newly found church. On the basis of the finds, of their individual characteristics, but above all of stratigraphic relations, they were classified in several burial stages. Despite the large number of graves, partly preserved were also the extraordinarily fat and compact black as well as the brown cultural layers. In addition to daub fragments, pottery fragments with mediaeval characteristics (wavy lines) and provincial classical antiquity or Celtic characteristics were unearthed.
Keywords
Ivanec; Middle Ages; architecture; mediaeval cemetery; Romanesque period
Hrčak ID:
64750
URI
Publication date:
3.3.2011.
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