These are the stories you can open in the 3D view, each at its own numbered point on the model.
1A village on the water
This is the Museum on Water in the Bay of Bones, on the south side of the Gradište peninsula near Peštani. On the lake bed here lie the remains of a pile-dwelling settlement of the late Bronze and early Iron Age, at a site called Ploča Mićov Grad. In 2007 and 2008 part of it was rebuilt above the water: a timber platform on piles, with huts, lanes and a footbridge to the shore.
Divers recorded about six thousand wooden piles on the lake bed, three to five metres down. They most probably carried one shared platform, as the new one here does. The pile nearest the shore stands about twelve metres out, and may belong to a bridge that joined the village to the land. Use the water button to see the piles under the surface.
Piles recorded: about 6,000
Depth: 3–5 m
Nearest pile: ~12 m from the shore (perhaps a bridge)
The rebuilt huts have walls of clay daub over woven branches and thick roofs of reed thatch, most of them square under hipped roofs, three of them round. Plank lanes and wattle fences run between them. How many houses stood on the old platform is not settled: the museum speaks of about twenty, while another account suggests a platform of some 8,500 square metres with perhaps sixty dwellings.
Huts rebuilt: 24 mapped (21 square, 3 round)
Original houses: about 20 (museum) or perhaps 60 (mk.wikipedia)
The settlement was studied under water, in campaigns every year from 1997 to 2005. Divers laid a square grid on the lake bed, marked out the extent of the village and excavated several fields. The museum notes that this work made underwater archaeology an official branch of archaeology in Macedonia for the first time. Lake Ohrid holds many more such remains, drowned as its level rose and fell.
Underwater campaigns: every year, 1997–2005
Method: a square grid on the lake bed, test fields
The lake bed gave up many objects of the Bronze and Iron Ages: broken and whole clay pots, stone and flint tools, fewer pieces of bronze, and a great many fragments of animal bone, some of them worked into tools. Deer antlers were found too. The finds suggest people who lived mostly from fishing, but also farmed and hunted. Some are shown in the visitor building on the shore.
Finds: pottery, stone and flint tools, bronze, worked bone
Also: deer antlers (mk.wikipedia)
Livelihood: mainly fishing, also farming and hunting
Above the bay, on the highest plateau of Gradište hill, stand the walls of a Roman fort, a castrum. It has been conserved, partly restored and opened as part of the same museum, so the ticket for the platform covers the walk up through the wood as well. From the walls the view runs across the bay and the pile village to the open lake and the mountains on the Albanian shore.
Lake Ohrid lies at about 695 metres and is up to 288 metres deep. Much of its water comes from springs fed through the karst from Lake Prespa, and it is clear enough to see down as far as twenty-two metres. That clarity is why the piles can still be seen and studied. The lake has been a World Heritage site since 1979; divers can go down from the museum.
