ARCHITECTURE IN SHAR MOUNTAIN VILLAGES

Abstract

The development of settlements in the area of Sredačka, Sirinićka and Goranska parishes should be seen in the context of the entire Shar Mountain, Kosovo and South-Western Balkans, where these high mountain parishes are located. We can record the development of settlements in these Shar Mountain parishes from its beginnings in this part of our country, since the Neolithic period, through the ancient and early Christian period, followed by the Middle Ages and up to the present day. There are visible traces of Pelasgiac, Illyrian, Thracian, in some parts Hellenistic, Roman, Slavic and Turkish-Oriental influences and ethnic presence in these parishes. All these ethnic processes, in conjunction with the natural environment and the socio-economic circumstances, had its historical impact on the evolutionary development of the Shar-mountain rural settlements. Rural settlements, villages, were built on sites that permitted the production activity, with frequent cases of renewal of existing settlements and the establishment of the new ones in their immediate vicinity. The Medieval Serbian state led to strengthening of the existing settlements, founding of the new ones, expansion of the existing ones and the receiving specific tasks and obligations arising from the feudal social order. These commitments were given in a number of charters and grants of our emperors, kings and nobles. These liabilities from the medieval period would result in the emergence and subsequent smooth development of "pečalbarenje" as a process that was very important for the development of rural settlements in the Shar mountain parishes.