Historical Locations in Blato - Fourth Impression
16-05-2012 14:07
In this post we will take a look on the pre-Greek settlements on the western part of the island of Korcula. Very interesting sites are small remains of round houses and guard towers that were used for keeping watch over the sea. They were built in the period of the neolithic...
The times were very rough those days, with many pirates attacks which made the local inhabitants construct guard towers on the top of the hills and look out for the intruders. The western part of the island of Korcula is caracterised by valleys in the inner part of the island and hillside on the outer part, and it was of great importance to control the sea channels (notably the channel between Korcula and Peljesac), the anchoring locations and the trading routes through the island. Those towers and houses are called "gradine", and when they were constructed on the high hills they were also used as some kind of a tomb.
One of the most known "gradina" on the western part is Kopila, located on the northern part of the Blato field. Others are scattered on the hills around the same field, in Potirna, on the northern coast of Vela Luka, in the field of Smokvica…
A lot of the data in this blog entry was provided from the scientific paper “Društveno-geografska preobrazba zapadnog dijela otoka Korčule ” by Lena Mirošević, published in Geoadria, Vol 13. nr 2, Zadar 2008.
