A Mighty Castle in the Clouds: New Insight on the Life in the Medieval Castle Solotnik from a Zooarchaeological Perspective

Abstract

During the High Medieval period Serbian state had no permanent rulers’ and noblemen’s residences, so the court has been moved from place to place. Nevertheless, residences were not often fortified, and in case of danger sovereign and nobility would move to a nearby fortified refuge. Due to the changing geopolitical circumstances during the 14th century, the court moved within the ramparts and it eventually transformed into a castle similar to those of Medieval Europe. Rulers’ and noblemen’s fortifications have usually been built at the higher altitudes and in that way, they were becoming part of the entire system of defense of the state. Since the attention of researchers was focused more on the residences of the rulers, only a few palaces of the nobility are known today, although they were probably numerous. One of them is certainly Solotnik castle located at the Kulina – Solotuša site. It was built on the eastern slopes of Tara mountain (western Serbia), during the 15th century, on a very inaccessible point surrounded by steep cliffs, at 830 m above sea level. A part of the faunal sample has already been published (Mladenović 2017), but the results of the new analyses indicate some different exploitation patterns in regard to the previous data. The purpose of this paper is to present new results of faunal analyses from Kulina – Solotuša site, and to reveal the characteristics of everyday life of inhabitants of one nobleman’s residence from a zooarchaeological perspective.