engleski

Small feudal residences in North-Western Croatia

Small feudal residences, respectively mediaeval hillforts and lowland moated and mounded sites are found throughout the entire area bordered by the Mura, Drava, Sava and Danube rivers, in northern Pannonian part of Croatia, which has always constituted a cultural and historical corridor that is intersected by longitudinal east-west transit routes and transversal routes that are vital to communication between Central and Eastern Europe and the Adriatic and the wider Mediterranean sphere. This region formed in the High and the Late Middle Ages an important part of the Kingdom of Hungary mainly because of its direct western border contact to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation as well as of its southern defensive boundaries to the Ottoman Empire. These fortifications consist of a central elevation protected by a ditch and a rampart or a system of ditches and ramparts. Unlike stone- castles, they were built mostly with earth and timber. Regarding their position there are lowland and elevated type of the fortifications. The present-day archaeological understanding of the time when those fortifications were in use in Croatia indicate the period between the 13th and 16th cent. The paper presents the results on documenting these sites using interdisciplinary methods of archaeological investigations, historical research, reconnaissance and remote sensing with special consideration to spatial organisation of the fortifications and their connections to the surrounding landscape.

small feudal residences; mediaeval hillforts; north-western Croatia

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