22 The Annunciation retable Similar holes with the same diameter have also been found in other objects in the church Gospa od Šunja, such as in the stretcher frame of the Annunciation painting, the organ gallery, the main retable, the ceiling of the choir, as well as in the Holy Cross retable and the side retables in the church of St Mary of Špilica (Gospa od Špilice). This brings up the question of what they were used for. It seems highly probable that these holes were made for timber rafting. While the holes do not seem to have an obvious function in the construction, they indicate that the beams and boards must have been transported on a raft, the holes made for joining the timber or boards in the raft. Transporting wood in a raft has long tradition. High quantities of wood were imported via Venice from the forests of the Piave valley.23 There, typically, holes of 3 and 5 cm were drilled into the beams and tree trunks to construct the raft and to connect the beams with young branches of hazelnut.24 In particular, extra boards were used to transversely stabilise the rafts. Water-powered sawmills on the upper course of rivers produced planks that were rafted as well. The holes observed were made to join the board stacks.25 (Fig. 24) Fig. 24: Table from Berenger, Dell’ Antica storia e giurisprudenza forestale in Italia. Treviso/Venezia 18591863. Tavola II.B, p. 809. The raft on the right (Fig. 6) is constructed using pre-sawn boards, piled and connected as shown in Fig. 6B, 6C, 6D and 6E. Series of drilled holes are clearly recognisable.
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