ОСВРТ НА РАНОСРЕДЊОВЕКОВНА НАЛАЗИШТА У СРЕДЊЕМ И ДОЊЕМ ПОДРИЊУ
A REVIEW OF EARLY MEDIEVAL SITES IN THE MIDDLE AND LOWER PODRINJE

Summary/Abstract: Archaeological sites and individual finds attributed to the first centuries of the Middle Ages in the wider area of the middle and lower reaches of the Drina River are known in small numbers. The oldest traces of a settled Slavic population are attributed to a settlement explored on the right bank of the Drina, in Mušići near Višegrad. The remains of a significantly larger early medieval settlement were excavated at the Jazbine site in the village of Batković near Bijeljina. The data related to burials and funeral customs are even more modest, fragmentary and uncertain. The accidental finds from Bosanska Rača and Dvorovo near Bijeljina are without a certain archaeological context, so the circumstances under which they were found are not clear enough for final conclusions regarding their character. There is more specific data for the finds from Dvorovo, based on which they can be more reliably interpreted as urns. These are finds that, in terms of texture and more developed profiling, are close to pots that, based on typological characteristics and the results of radiocarbon analyses, are attributed to the 7th century. In Mušići and Batković, the remains of unfortified settlements based on flat and fertile plain terrain near watercourses, were discovered. When publishing the research results, the beginning of life in Mušići was determined to be from the beginning of the 7th century, while in Batković it was placed around the middle of the same century. In later literature, one can find various opinions that place the founding of the settlement at a somewhat earlier, but also at a later time. Taking into account the available material from the environment, especially that for which there are accompanying C14 dating results, the oldest objects from Mušići could not be dated before the 7th century. The same applies to the dating of the objects in Batković, bearing in mind that none of the dwellings contains ceramics exclusively made without the use of a potter’s wheel. When it comes to the time of the settlements’ founding, taking into account the available archaeological material, but also the geographical position, especially that of Batković, it seems acceptable to assume that it was at a time when there was no longer any danger from the Avars, the lords of nearby Sirmium. This would have been possible after 626 and the defeat at Constantinople, when the Khaganate entered a time of crisis and decline of central authority, internal turmoil and rebellions. Irma Čremošnik attributed the settlement in Batković to the Eastern Slavs, who, having come from the Dnieper area, across the Danube and Sava, inhabited these areas in several waves. She also recognized influences from the East in the residential architecture. Today, however, after almost half a century, with the knowledge brought by new research, especially in recent decades, it seems clear that the answer to this question can also be sought on the other side. An important feature of the settlement are the shallowly buried buildings with irregular oval foundations. At both sites, no quadrangular dugouts with stone stoves in the corner, which otherwise represent the most common form of house in early Slavic settlements throughout Europe, have been registered. One of the important features is the existence of a hearth, while in none of the investigated buildings have the remains of a stove been found. Analogies are found in settlements of the 6th–9th centuries in the northwestern parts of the Slavic world of the time. The existence of various oval-shaped residential buildings, buried with various degree of depth, is also observed in early medieval settlements in Slovenia and Croatia. The appearance of such buildings in Podrinje could also be interpreted as the extreme southeastern range of this type of habitat, including some buildings known from the territory of present-day Serbia, for the time being only in the West Morava valley. Written sources also testify to the connections of the northwestern Slavic area with the Balkans. However, taking into account the poor state of research and paucity of the available data, it still seems that drawing any far-reaching conclusions in this direction would have to be preceded by far more extensive archaeological research both in Podrinje and in the surrounding areas.

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