Abstract:

In a field survey of the Slatina area the Bobovište site was identified and the finds suggested a possible cemetery from the beginning of the Late Bronze Age in Podravina. Small-scale trial excavations were conducted in order to check the hypothesis of a possible cemetery site, as well as to determine microtopographic and chronological relations of Late Bronze Age settlements in the Slatina area. The trial excavations encompassed the eastern part of the settlement from the older stage of the Late Bronze Age. Unearthed in the settlement were parts of shallower trenches (SU 10, 18, 26, 28, 44), which might be remains of fences of smaller plots, as well as pillar hole remains (SU 14, 20, 24, 30, 32) with some daub, and pits (SU 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 22, 34, 36, 38, 40) with waste materials, containing ceramic vessels fragments, bones and charcoal. Characteristic for the Bobovište site is a large quantity of incinerated bones in the pits, which in a preliminary analysis were marked as animal bones, thus confirming the site as a settlement. In the waste pit fills, a larger quantity of pottery fragments was found. Indicative are certain fragments of bowls with an inverted rim, characteristic of the Virovitica group, as well as bows with an inverted rim and fragments of vessels on foot. Those pottery types can be dated into Br D and Ha A1 phases, i.e. in the 13th and 12th century BC. The settlement Slatina Bobovište belongs to a series of lowland settlements from the period of the older phase of the Late Bronze Age, familiar from the territory of Podravina from Čepinski Martinci (Kalafatić 2009) to Cerine VII near Koprivnica (Kulenović 2004), and partly from parallel settlements in the Slovenian part of Podravlje, for example Oloris (Dular et al. 2002) or Ptuj (Strmčnik-Gulič 1989).

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