Stari Tar/Tarovec (St. Blek, Tar) – attempt at a typological and functional interpretation of the sacral complex within the medieval settlement / Stari Tar/Tarovec (St. Blek, Tar) – pokušaj tipološke i funkcionalne interpretacije sakralnoga sklopa unutar srednjovjekovnoga naselja

Systematic excavations at the site Tar – Stanzia Blek (Tar – Vabriga/Torre – Abrega municipality, Istria county), to be identified with the settlement Stari Tar (Old Tar) known from historic sources, yielded the remains of a multiphase settlement founded in the 1st cent. AD and developing through a series of radical transformations until at least the 14th cent., when it started to be abandoned in favor of the modern Tar settlement. Precise chronologies of each phase are still tentative, but thanks to discovery of a small chapel and adjacent sepulchral building, probably to be date to the early Middle Ages, allows setting them in context within the settlement and compare them with other examples from Istria and wider areas, in order to propose a possible time frame for the organization of this section of the settlement. While several features (“tower”, fortification wall and its entrance, smithy, etc.) can be connected to the early Medieval phase of the settlement of Stari Tar, precise chronological indicators are still lacking. Nevertheless, few pottery fragments could be connected to this phase, while all Medieval coins should rather be ascribed to the last phases of use or abandonment. Along with the central nucleus of the settlement, at a certain point enclosed by the fortification walls, the nearby church of The Holy Cross (formerly St. Mary) should also be connected to it. To the Medieval phase the sacral complex located to the east of the tower, and from it divided by the reconstructions and prolongation of the eastern wall of the Roman cistern, can be ascribed. Determined in 2006, the small church was then cleared, while two trial trenches where dug in 2019. As the pavement with stone floor slabs is still mostly preserved, trenches were positioned within the nave and the presbytery so to avoid removing of the original flooring. Along with the floor slabs, the base for the altar chancel, a stone pillar in the nave and possibly the altar base were found in situ, while within the rubble filling up the church fragments of the chancel pilasters and of the nave’s pillar were recovered, along with stone elements not pertinent to the church furniture. Previously, several stone fragments with interlace decoration were recovered from the rubble in this and within the western sector of the site. Shallow stratigraphy within the trenches in the church did not aid dating of its construction, but it allowed to propose a unique building phase for the floor and the liturgical furniture. In fact, a layer of levelling composed of stones and tegulae, and stone “ frames” positioned so to correspond with each slab, were laid as floor preparation, while all elements were adapted so to fit each other. Building technique assimilates the church and its annex to the aforementioned cistern’s wall prolongation and several adjacent structures, being rather regular but with stone blocks of different dimensions and rows of different heights, thus not very chronologically sensitive.