Heritage Malta Completes the Digitial Acquisition at Mramorje, Serbia, 15-18th July, 2025
Description
From 15 to 18 July 2025, the Digitisation Unit at Heritage Malta conducted fieldwork at Mramorje, a medieval limestone site located in Perućac, Serbia, as part of the Horizon Europe STECCI project. This fieldwork marked the latest step in building a comparative archive of limestone monuments across Europe, with a continued focus on digital documentation and conservation-informed recording strategies.
Located in the village of Perućac, near the Drina River, Mramorje is one of the most prominent Stećci necropolises in Serbia. The site itself, postioned in the western reaches of Serbia hosts one of the most extensive and varied collections of Stećci in the region. Characterised by its shaded forested setting and layered topography, Mramorje offered a rich opportunity for the team to scan not only the physical site as a whole, but to prioritise and record Stećci of various typologies.
The documentation strategy focused on creating a complete site model, while also selectively targeting Stećci that had been part of previous condition assessments. The team identified and prioritised monuments that reflected the wide range of formal variation at the site, including monuments with plated, gabled monuments with and without plinths, chests with and without stands and amorphous or irregular formed monuments. This variety enabled the team to expand the digital dataset with representative models of different construction styles and degrees of preservation.
On site were Warren Attard, Myron Saliba, and Kyle Attard from Heritage Malta, joined by Mr Boska (UNSPMF), who provided local support and site context.
To meet the demands of the terrain and object scale, the team employed ground-based LiDAR and terrestrial photogrammetry using handheld DSLR setups. In line with STECCI’s commitment to developing scalable digitisation practices, additional low-cost tests were carried out using RealityScan and Polycam, exploring the potential of lower-cost methodologies to support documentation in remote or resource-limited contexts.
The result was a full digital scan of the area and a high-quality cross-section of the diverse Stećci forms present at Mramorje, an important contribution to the project’s comparative research goals. With each new acquisition site, STECCI continues to expand both its geographic reach and methodological range, refining how digital tools can support the conservation and interpretation of Europe’s vulnerable limestone heritage.