Hi,
some time ago, I was wondering what would be the proper way to tag a
stećak (plural form stećci), a large monolithic tombstone, often with
carved inscriptions and/or ornaments, found in Bosnia and neighbouring
countries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ste%C4%87ak).
They are usually the shape of a large coffin (though other shapes exist
too), but they are solid stone, unlike sarcophagi, which really _are_
coffins, i.e. hollow. They are usually found in groups from a few up to
a few hundred. The groups of stećci are locally known as necropolises,
though they don't quite fit the Wiki's definition of a necropolis - "a
large ancient cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments" - they are not
necessarily large, they aren't really ancient (they're medieval) and
they're hardly elaborate monuments - it's just biggish stone blocks
strewn randomly on a meadow.
Normally, it would probably be enough to tag the necropolis as a whole
(probably as some sort of a historic=archaeological_site) but like I
said, sometimes they are isolated and sometimes they have been moved to
a another location altogether. Furthermore, there are efforts to
catalogue them and decipher/translate the inscriptions carved into some
of them, so it can definitely be of interest to some people to know
where exactly a particular stećak is located.
They are usually described as tombstones though I'm not 100% sure if all
of them are tombstones, there might be some that served some other
(ceremonial?) purpose rather that marking an actual grave, but I might
be wrong. Then there are some that used to mark a grave but were moved
to a different location (there are some on display in front of a museum
in Sarajevo and some other places) so they should be tagged as
stand-alone objects, not as features of graves. The graves themselves
aren't significant, to my knowledge - most of them are nameless, they
aren't normally researched/exhumed etc.
I've started a thread on the Bosnian forum
(https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=56800, in
Serbo-Croatian) but I only got one answer since the Bosnian community
isn't exactly active, so I thought I'd ask what you guys think, even
though some of you might not be familiar with the subject.
So far, I have a couple of ideas in mind:
historic=rune_stone + historic:civilization=*
+ both are established tags
+ to a layperson it gives a pretty good idea what to expect
- they are not rune stones
- there is no consensus as to what civilization created them, unless we
use something very generic like "Bosnian_pre-islamic" or similar
historic=tombstone + tombstone=stećak
+ probably the most accurate
- not well established (just one occurrence of historic=tombstone
according to taginfo.osm.org)
- not sure whether all of them are tombstones
historic=stećak
+ straightforward and accurate
- not established at all
- hardly anybody knows what a stećak is IRL
- contains a non-ASCII character, some people might not be bothered to
spell it properly
historic=stecak
+ more user friendly than the above
- "wrong" spelling - might confuse users who speak the local language,
i.e. the ones most likely to map them
So, any suggestions?
Best regards,
--
Michal
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