Tauroctony Relief from Dardagan Revisited / Nova interpretacija tauroktonije iz Dardagana

Abstract

This paper examines the tauroctony relief from the village Dardagan, near Zvornik (Bosnia and Herzegovina), and proposes a new interpretation of the monument. Contrary to previous views, which deemed the relief as a primitive work executed by an unskilled sculptor, the careful analysis of its stylistic, compositional, and iconographic features, as argued in the paper, reveals its semi-finished nature. Since the existence of the workshop at the quarry in Dardagan was recently proven, the tauroctony relief is interpreted as its product. Moreover, it is the sole evidence that, besides funerary monuments and architectural elements, the workshop also produced votive images for specific cults. The tauroctony from Dardagan represents a unique instance of a semi finished Mithraic sculpture discovered at its production site within the Roman province of Dalmatia. Furthermore, an examination of archaeological reports and original photographs of Milica Kosorić allowed for a better understanding of the context of the tauroctony’s discovery, providing new insights into the small finds and rock-carved figures so far associated with the cult. It is argued that these finds cannot be linked to the cult of Mithras and that the existence of the mithraeum at the site remains hypothetical.