Original scientific paper

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS IN POZORAC NEAR MARINA

Miroslav Katić ; Ministarstvo kulture RH, Konzervatorski odjel u Trogiru

Abstract

The Church of Our Lady of the Angels in Pozorac by Marina was known previously for its late medieval gravestones. In September 2015 the municipality of Marina started excavations for the development of new graves. On that occasion, a dozen graves were found, made of roughly dressed stone slabs, probably from the late medieval and early modern age. In the northern part of the excavation a Late Antique built grave was also found. It was closed with rectangular stone doors and had barrel vaulting that was not preserved. The grave was filled with fragments of Antique sarcophagi and of some kind of semicircular stone railing. Also found in the excavation was a fragment of a capital that originally stood in the altar screen and can be dated to the 5th or 6th century. Clearly, underneath the Church of Our Lady of Angels or in the immediate vicinity there had been an Early Christian church. The site called Gradina placed a hundred metres from Our Lady of Angels should be considered in the same spatial context as the Late Antique cemetery and church, Under the stone piles the remains of a wall that stretched in the east-west direction can be seen. Petine is another important archaeological site in the southern part of Gustirna field located about two hundred metres to the north of Our Lady of the Angels. This was a Roman villa rustica of rather large dimensions that cannot with certainty be ascertained to have existed in Late Antiquity. Apart from this Early Christian church located in Gustirna field, there was probably one more, housed in the fort of Drid, from Late Antiquity. At that time, the whole area was densely populated, and the space was dominated by Drid Fort with its harbour at its foot, and in the field there were rural settlements to which the church in Pozorac clearly belonged. The location of the Early Christian church at the southern edge of Gustiran field, where the cultivable land shades off into rocky karst, shows the endeavour for the cemetery and church to occupy as little valuable cultivable land as possible. The church probably inherited the economic role of the Roman villa rustica at Petine. It can be said that apart from the continuity of the cult and the burial site, the Church of Our Lady of Angels also preserves the economic continuity of the southern part of the Gustirna field.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

193120

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/193120

Publication date:

20.2.2017.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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