Dry-stack wall heritage of the Dinarides

Dry-stack wall construction, characteristic of the karst area, is a feature of the traditional heritage of the entire Mediterranean coast. Dry-stack wall is very pronounced along the Adriatic-Dinaric area, from Kras and Istria in Slovenia; Dalmatia with the islands, Lika, southern and central Velebit in Croatia; Herzegovina karst; coastal and central part of Montenegro, to Albanian Prokletije.

The art of building dry-stack wall is the skill of making stone structures by stacking one stone on top of another without the use of binding material (mortar, plaster). It refers to the technique of building with unworked stone of irregular shape or broken stone with minimal processing, which was used by humans from prehistoric times to the present day.

The oldest forms of dry-stack wall constructions, the remains of pre-Illyrian and Illyrian fortified settlements (fortresses) and burial mounds (tumuli), are evident throughout the Dalmatian coast, the Skadar Lake basin (Montenegro/Albania), and in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the highest concentration in the mountainous area of the Dinarides, e.g. on Glasinac with over 100 castles (Glasinac culture) or near Livno with about 40 localities. Massive stone ramparts of the city fortifications, as a rule, formed in dominant positions, were built using a simple dry-stack wall technique.

For centuries, skilled constructers’ hands have taken out stones of various shapes from the ground and local quarries and put great effort to stack them one on top of another, creating kilometres of dry-stack walls. During construction, stones with two parallel faces and elongated pieces, which could be well embedded in the depth of the wall, were particularly suitable.

Stonemasons quarried and processed stone, and masons built dry-stack walls and covered roofs with stone slabs. Residential country houses, roads, wells, draw wells, bridges, threshing floors, stables, sheepfolds were built using the dry-stack wall technique. The space between the settlements is networked with dry-stack retaining walls, retaining walls of terraces, fences of agricultural and livestock areas, field houses, temporary housing facilities in summer pastures – various forms of buildings that changed, enriched and refined the landscape of the Dinaric karst and became a kind of dedication and monuments to human effort in struggle for survival.

The main features of ownership demarcation of land holdings and agricultural organization of space in the Dinaric karst area of the Adriatic coast and its hinterland were dry-stack borders (local names are different depending on the area – dry-stack walls, duvarovi, gromače, mocire, redine, prizide…(all of which denote either building material or technique)). There are countless examples of this type of dry-stack wall architectural heritage, especially in the Croatian coast and islands.

Endless kilometres of dry-stack walls surround the Dalmatian vineyards. According to some data, they are 7 times longer than the Great Wall of China and stretch the length of two Earth’s equators. The Primošten vineyards, in the Bucavac Veliki locality, leave the impression of “stone lace” with many boxed dry-stack plots, where the famous Babić variety is grown.

The islet of Baljenac (Bavljenac), 1.43 km long, located in the Šibenik archipelago, with its unique shape and interwoven network of 23 km of dry-stack walls, resembles of a giant fingerprint.

The most famous limestone landscapes with more than 320 km of pasture and olive dry-stack fences, borders, are located in the Kornati National Park and represent one of the biggest attractions of that protected area.

The pinnacle of the art of building without mortar are dry-stack arched bridges made of unworked stone. One of the most representative examples is the Kuda Bridge on the Krupa River at the foot of the Velebit, from the turn of the XVIII to the XIX century, 109 meters long, with 12 arched openings built from cut blocks of travertine.

The finest examples of dry-stack wall construction certainly include Premužić’s path, which stretches for 57 km along the peaks of the northern and middle Velebit and passes 16 km through the Northern Velebit National Park. It was designed by forestry engineer Ante Premužić, who participated in the construction in 1930/33.

The Istrian region is densely interwoven with support structures, fences and field houses called kažun (kužeta), mainly circular in shape, with conical stone roofs. Kažuns are the most attractive examples of Istrian dry-stack construction and provide a special aesthetic value to the cultural landscape of this area. Usually, they were used as temporary shelters for people and livestock and as tool storage. From Kras in Slovenia, where they are called hiška (to denote a small house), to Istria and the Dalmatian bunja (bunjica, vrtujac, komarda), several characteristic shapes of these stone shelters can be distinguished. In Dalmatia, bunjas were mostly covered with semicircular roofs.

Dry-stack technique is significantly represented in the architectural legacy of the Bjelašnica, the Treskavica, the Prenja and other Dinaric mountains of Herzegovina. There are a number of dry-stack walls in Dugo polje in the Blidinje Nature Park. In addition to dry-stack walls (duvarovi), terraced supporting walls, ponds and sheepfolds, the rocky Herzegovinian landscape is completed by field huts and various shelters, usually covered with branches, reeds and straw, as well as by structures on the water, a large number of cisterns (gustirna, šternja), wells (draw wells), sinkholes and puddles.

The overall dry-stack wall landscape of the southern and central parts of Montenegro is dominated by bordered country roads, valleys (vales) with supporting walls, traditional residential and agricultural buildings with roofs made of stone slabs and rye straw. There are still preserved villages in which all structures are in dry-stack (e.g. Mali Zalazi on the Lovćen slopes, the village of Žlijebi under the Orjen, Gornja Lastva on the Vrmac slopes).

The characteristic elements of the Lovćen landscape are draw wells, open and covered with dry-stack construction (so-called vaults) and bistierna (water collection draw well); summer pasture huts and single-storey houses, once covered with straw and stone slabs (salidža). The architecture of Lovćen is recognizable by the large number of threshing floors, on which grain was threshed, some of Njeguši villages have as many as fifteen. Thresh floors are also a feature of the rural rocky environment of Lake Skadar, dominant in the area of Crmnica.

On the watercourses of the entire region of the Skadar Lake (Montenegro and Albania), there are numerous dry-stacked old bridges and mills.

The technique and knowledge of dry-stack construction is perhaps best described by a quote from Antonije Nigojević, one of the initiators of the Croatian association for the protection and preservation of the dry-stack wall heritage “Dragodid”, from Komiža on Vis… “Dry-stack wall construction is very similar to building relationships in a social community. Just as every person in the community is equally important and valuable, so is every stone in the construction of dry-stack wall equally important and valuable lest that building would not survive. The small one is just as important as the big one, the one in the middle is just as important as the one at the top, as well as the one at the bottom. Every individual is important for overall survival, be it a stone in a dry-stack wall or a person in a society”.

Thanks to many projects and the commitment of numerous associations, individuals and experts for the protection of traditional architectural heritage, dry-stack masonry in the Mediterranean area is recognized as a special skill that should be preserved from oblivion. As a result of the joint international nomination of Spain, France, Italy, Slovenia, Switzerland, Croatia, Greece and Cyprus, the art of dry-stack constructing was listed as the Intangible Heritage of Humanity by the UNESCO in 2018, under the name Art of dry stone walling, knowledge and techniques (Umjetnost suvozidne gradnje, znanja i tehnike) thereby creating exceptional conditions for the preservation of this priceless multi-century building tradition.

You are donating to : Greennature Foundation

How much would you like to donate?
$10 $20 $30
Would you like to make regular donations? I would like to make donation(s)
How many times would you like this to recur? (including this payment) *
Name *
Last Name *
Email *
Phone
Address
Additional Note
paypalstripe
Loading...