Connecting the Past With its Past: The Overlap of Medieval Stećci and Prehistoric Mounds

The research examines the Hatelji and Baljci sites in present-day eastern Herzegovina, exploring the relationship between prehistoric barrows and medieval burial locations and the role of place reuse in the formation of medieval identities. Abstarct: Distinctive from the 12th to 16th centuries AD, stećci are enigmatic and understudiedtombstones that scatter the Western Balkans. Medieval cemeteries, home to theseremarkable monuments, are often found on the location of prehistoric burial sites - bothBronze- and Iron-age mounds. The reasons for this may have been practical, forexample, environmentally based choices of burial; they may reflect the long-livedmemory or could be an appropriation of places haunted by a mysterious past. Althoughthis practice is well-known and studied in other regions across Europe, ancient funerarylandscapes began to be reused in the Western Balkans only from the 12th century AD -roughly 400 years later than elsewhere in Medieval Europe. Our team will share theinitial results of the pilot archaeological research on two distinct sites in EasternHerzegovina (Bosnia and Herzegovina). The Hatelji and Baljci sites were studied toexplore the intriguing relationship between prehistoric barrows and medieval buriallocations. We shall present the identity and social structure of the people who had pickedthese locations for burying their dead. Moreover, through our analysis and comparisonwith similar cases in the region, we will address the significance of ritual landscapes inthe medieval Balkans, the (dis)continuity of funerary ideologies, and the appropriation ofold funerary places over time.