Stećci Medieval Tombstone Graveyards
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How it came to be
Stećci (singular stećak) are medieval tombstones found across Bosnia and Herzegovina and in western Serbia, western Montenegro and central and southern Croatia. They were made from the second half of the 12th century to the 16th century, most of them in the 14th and 15th. More than 70,000 survive in over 3,300 burial grounds, mostly carved from limestone quarried close by.
The graveyards are laid out in rows, as was usual in medieval Europe, with one stone to each grave. The stones take five basic forms, slab, chest, gabled roof, cross and pillar, and are carved with crosses, weapons, sun and moon symbols, deer, dancers and hunting scenes. Many carry Cyrillic inscriptions, and a few name the master carvers, called smiths. At Boljuni near Stolac, the historian Bogumil Hrabak concluded in 1953 that the carver Grubač made the stone of Bogovac no later than 1477.
The word stećak is first recorded in the mid 19th century, when scholarly interest in the stones began. The making of stećci is thought to have stopped in the 16th century, when graveyards came to be divided by confession. Work on a joint nomination by the four countries began in 2009, and 28 of the cemeteries were inscribed in 2016.
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