Discovering the Old Dubrovnik Cathedrals. Research Activities and the International Collaboration in 2020-2022

The paper presents the activities of the project Discovering the Old Dubrovnik Cathedrals in the period 2020-2022, including the activities of the newly estab-lished collaborations with Croatian institutions and international consortia. The main goal of the project is the expert and scientific analysis of all movable monuments and archaeological finds from the site of Dubrovnik Cathedral, which was archaeologically excavated in the 1980s. After 80% of all movable finds were analysed in the previous phases of the project (mainly the stone sculpture and the plaster of the wall paintings of the two churches preceding the Baroque cathedral), the collecting and analysing of data for the in situfinds was initiated in 2020. This refers primarily to the preserved parts of the earliest basilica, its sanc-tuary, and the side aisles. We present the preliminary results of integrating data for pre-Romanesque stone sculpture and different layers of plasterin situ, laying the foundations for a chronological determination of particular phases of church-furnishing that differs from the current ones. The obtained results will be complemented by the AMS 14C analysis of the samples of plaster and bones from the graves collected on the site, and by the OSL and archaeomagnetism analysis of the samples of mortar from the sanctuary wall and of the soil from the area of the main aisle of the church, which are all in progress. It is of great importance for further interpretation of the finds that the site was documented using contemporary methods: photo-grammetric images of the sanctuary and individual burial units, and multispectral images of painted scenes and drawings from the side aisles of the church.