Non-destructive survey and documentation of graffiti of St. Stefan Medieval church in Nesebar

Abstract

The survey of graffiti of the St. Stefan’s church is a part of a larger project aiming to record, study and disseminate all graffiti inscribed in medieval churches in Nesebar (fig. 1). Most of them represent ships and are an important source of information for maritime traditions along the Western Black Sea coast. They are cut on four churches – St. Spas, St. Todor, St. John Aliturgetos and St. Stefan and are dated between the 14th–the beginning of 19th c., mostly after the 17th c.
In 2018, overall 202 graffiti were recorded from the churches St. Spas and St. Todor. St. Stefan’s church (fig. 2) is a three-nave basilica built on a rectangular space measuring 12.10 m in length and 9.50 m in width (fig. 3). The earliest part of the church is supposed to date back to the 10th–11th c. The murals in the
interior of the church have been dated in 1599.
Fieldwork in 2019 was focused primarily on the RTI capture of all graffiti located in the altar space and interior walls of the southern and northern nave. For the purpose of the capturing process, individual graffiti are combined into
panels. During this phase, a total of 36 panels were captured (fig. 4). Fieldwork was followed by processing the acquired photographic data, generating RTI models and graphically illustrating them (fig. 5).
In the interior of the church 124 graffiti were registered, recorded and illustrated in total. The majority are vessels – 114 graffiti. There are numerous sketched, unfinished or half-erased graffiti of vessels. Very few of the surviving
graffiti depict a detailed picture of boats or ships. Another part of the graffiti depicts animals (one graffito of a goat, five of birds, and two of horses). The third group consists of inscriptions (mainly names with Greek letters) and years. The
majority are poorly preserved and illegible.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Zdravka, Hristova Georgieva: orcid.org/0000-0001-5842-5085

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