Mанастир Илиње Код Овчар Бање Рановизантијско и Средњовековно Утврђење
Monastery Ilinje Near Ovčar Banja: Early Byzantine and Mediaeval Fortress

Summary/Abstract: The monasteries of the Ovčarsko-Kablarska Gorge represent a complex of great cultural importance. The natural surroundings of the gorge, with its steep rocky sides and secluded nooks provided a convenient setting for the building of nine monasteries, two chapels and a church dedicated to St Elias which is wrongly called monastery because the original plan was to build a monastery after the completion of the church. «Monastery» Ilinje, is situated above Monastery of the Annunciation, at a distance of about fifteen minutes' walk, and it belongs to that monastery. The church dedicated to St Elias is a small, unprepossessing single-nave building with a semicircular apse and a gable roof, built in 1939. The stone built into the church was partly found on the site. It is certain that the lime used for its construction was also made from the pieces of fallen limestone rock found on the spot and, possibly, also from the stone quarried from the remains of defence walls and fortified structures. Protective archaeological explorations were carried out in August 2005. They revealed a dry wall 2.5 metres long, which formed a part of an early Byzantine structure. It lay about thirty metres west of the church, next to the west profile of the exploration trench 1. The remains of a plastered floor, a hearth, and traces of mortar which supply some evidence of how the walls were constructed, show that the structure was used in the mediaeval times as well. A kiln for calcining lime dating from the time of the building of the church was found on the east side of the exploration trench. After a survey of the terrain and the «tracing» of walls, the outline of the fortress was partly defined, particularly in its northern and eastern parts. These works revealed the remains of a tower in the immediate vicinity of the church. The discovered material has been divided into early Byzantine and mediaeval. The early Byzantine ware is rather scarce and belongs to the already known 6th and early 7th century forms. At the beginning of the 10th century the dominant locations along the rim of the Čačak basin were settled, or rather reoccupied. This process lasted until the beginning of the 13th century, as the pottery material from Ilinje shows. The early Byzantine fortress was also revitalized in that period. The find of a pottery whorl shows that it was not a purely military fortification, and one find seems to support the hypothesis of the existence of a late mediaeval watch-tower. A spur found in a layer of humus has details – a star with arched arms – characteristic of spurs dating from the late 14th and the 15th centuries. It represents an isolated find, for there are no culture layers or other finds from this period. If the existence of a late mediaeval layer here were proven, that would confirm the hypothesis that two towers (it is established that the layer containing the remains of a tower near the monastery of the Dormition of the Virgin dates from the 14th-15th centuries) guarded the entrance to the gorge and the mediaeval monasteries.

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