engleski

The Findings of Sarcophagi Reused as Building material in the Church of St. George in Mateško Selo

Stone quarried in the karst hinterland was used for building. It seems that large quantities were extracted, as judged by the number of quarries (Dugi Dol, Mračin, Štirkovac) in a relatively small area southwest of Karlovac. Today one finds in quarries a large number of stone trunks and lids as well as unfinished sarcophagi and building fragments. They are very frequently found built into mediaeval structures. The church in Mateško Selo is almost entirely built of stone trunks of urns and their lids. We encounter such finds also in river beds, where they mostly served as structural improvement of a river crossing, that is, as a foundation for a river ford. On the basis of frequent finds of stone urns and sarcophagi with a round inscription field, one can presume a strong influence from nearby Noricum or even direct administration from that province. Bubijeva Jama near Barilović, Jopićeva Špilja near Krnjak, the Lipa cave in Protulipa and Markova Špilja near Mateško Selo are necropolises from antiquity, and in a territory between the middle and lower courses of the Korana and Mrežnica rivers three settlements from antiquity were discovered, as well as 25 smaller ancient stone quarries, where sarcophagi and urns were produced, and 16 positions where lids and trunks of sarcophagi and urns had been found, as spolia or individual finds. Certain authors think, when it comes to cave burials, that those were plague-infected people, but we believe that they represent people of Oriental origin. The custom of depositing the body in a sarcophagus was introduced to Pannonia by people from the Orient in the mid-2nd cent. A.D. In this contribution I will try to reconsider from various points of view the sarcophagi and the other stone monuments of St. George Church in Mateško Selo.

sarcophagi, urns, lids, Mateško Selo, Roman period

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