Page 906 - Kosovo Metohija Heritage

Tombstones and inscriptions at Old Serbian Cemeteries and Church Sites in in Kosovo and Metohija
Tombstones and grave markers at old Serbian cemeter- ies are most frequently situated around a church or a church site, on hillsides outside villages, in the shade of ancient oaks as an inseparable part of the landscape. They had an important place in folk art as part of a far larger and sig- nificant whole, whose value still has not been fully per- ceived and which offer a separate and interesting complex to archaeological, urban-rural, historical, ethnological, phil- ological, art and other types of research.
although the results of work conducted over several decades on recording and studying tombstones at the old Serbian cemeteries are not included in this book, we have given basic information about the old Serbian cemeteries and presented most characteristic of the tombstones found there today.
Since more than 200.000 Serbs and Montenegrins were forced to leave their ancestral homes in Kosovo and Meto- hija as a result of ethnic albanian nationalist violence in recent decades, old and modern Serbian cemeteries alike are constantly being destroyed, desecrated, even plowed by ethnic albanians. a large number of illustrations have a documentary value because a considerable number of mon- uments had in the meantime been destroyed. We hope that somebody will record the rest of Serbian cemeteries in Kosovo and Metohija and in this way preserve them from oblivion before they physically disappear.
The Raising of Lazarus, west arm of the cross, vault, Church of the Mother of God Hodegetria,
the Patriarchate of Peć, ca. 1335
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Tombstone lid of landlord Radoslav (Jovan as monk) in Crkolez, near Peć, 1395
Tombstone inscription of Todor, son of Žegar, nomic (legislator) from the Holy Mother of God of Ljeviša, 1387
Tombstone lid of Miloš the judge, son of Ozrislal, Studenica of Hvosno, near Peć