Rakitnica

A site in the hinterland

The kiln that built Dalmatia’s rooftops

In Rakitničko polje, not far from Velika Mrdakovica, there was a Roman ceramic kiln for producing roof tiles. That fact alone would not attract much attention — the Romans covered all of Dalmatia with their building industry — but there is one detail that sets Rakitnica apart: it is one of only two Roman roof-tile kilns securely located in the whole of Dalmatia.

Two. For all of Dalmatia. That is not a small distinction. It means that every house, every public building, every military structure that had tiles on its roof in Roman times had to get them from one of a very small number of places that researchers have been able to locate with certainty. Rakitnica was one of them.

Not glamorous. Not a rhyton or a necropolis. But someone had to fire the tiles — and someone did it right here, in a field just beyond Arauzona.

Connection with Arauzona

A town and its industry

The catalogue of the Šibenik City Museum does not treat Rakitnica as a separate chapter, but mentions it in the context of the geographical and economic position of Arauzona. Roman ceramic kilns for roof tiles were, after all, inseparably linked to urban infrastructure — every town that had moved on from tents or huts and started building in stone needed tiles for its roofs.

The connection between Arauzona and Rakitnica is not merely geographical proximity. The road running from Jader (Zadar) toward Salona (Solin) passed through this area, which meant that tiles could be distributed along one of the key Roman roads in Dalmatia. Rakitnica was not an isolated operation — it was part of a system.

A village that outlasted everything

The western slopes of Rakitničko polje today hide the abandoned village of Srdarići — one of the few fully intact indigenous rustic units, its houses built in the traditional technique of stone construction. No renovation, no modernisation, nothing that changed the rest of the coast. Just abandoned stone houses built from the stone that has always been on those slopes.

There is something almost poetic in that image: in the same field where the Romans fired roof tiles, centuries later a stone village was built, and then that too was abandoned — and now in the same space there remain only walls, a field, and silence.

State of research

What we know and what we do not yet know

As with Pišča, the catalogue we have used as our primary source mentions Rakitnica in a single sentence — as the location of one of the two known kilns, in a context describing the broader economic significance of Arauzona. A detailed study of the kiln itself — dimensions, capacity, dating, finds — is not part of the available documentation in this collection.

What is certain: the kiln existed, it is Roman, and it has been reliably located — which is itself rare. What remains to be explored: everything else. If conservation or archaeological documentation of the site exists, this page will gladly grow to reflect it.

Sources

Toni Brajković, Velika Mrdakovica — Results of the Latest Archaeological Research (2011–2013)

Šibenik City Museum, 403rd temporary exhibition · Vodice, 2014 · ISBN 978-953-58070-0-1 · English translation: Marija Mlinar

This page was prepared for guests of Arauzona on the basis of the catalogue cited above. For scholarly reference, please contact the Šibenik City Museum.