Pržine, Bosansko Grahovo (Serbian Cyrillic: Пржине) is a village in the Municipality of Bosansko Grahovo, in Canton 10 of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, an entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is located at approximately 44°02′32″N 16°35′27″E, at an elevation of roughly 714 metres, in the karst region of the Livanjsko polje (Livno Field) area.
Name and etymology
According to local and regional sources, the settlement's name derives from pržina, a regional word used in the area for sand. The Serbo-Croatian lexicographic record glosses pržina as a regional term meaning "sea sand, sand from the seabed," and also "iron filings." One etymological account connects the word to the verb pržiti ("to scorch, to burn"), literally "something that scorches." Local tradition holds that the village was named for the abundant sand deposits in the vicinity, a material historically used as a building resource. This etymological explanation is found in regional ethnographic writing rather than in formal toponymic scholarship and should therefore be regarded as traditional rather than definitively established.
Demographics
Population figures for Pržine are recorded across several Yugoslav and post-independence censuses. The 1961 census recorded 501 inhabitants; 1971, 406; 1981, 328; and 1991, 290, all of whom were recorded as Serbs in 1991. According to the 2013 census of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the village had 58 inhabitants, all of them ethnic Serbs. Some preliminary 2013 census publications reported a figure of 70, which differs from the final published result.
Economy
The village has been associated with the extraction and processing of sand and gravel, consistent with the local abundance of sandy deposits. During the socialist Yugoslav period, a forest nursery (rasadnik) named "Pržine," producing seedlings of various coniferous and some deciduous tree species and employing approximately 120 workers, operated in the area; it continued operating after the 1990s conflict and is administered under the public forest enterprise Hercegbosanske šume. A private company, Separacija Pržine d.o.o., founded in 1997, produces sand, gravel, and concrete and is based at Pržine.
Status
Pržine is a documented, officially recognized settlement with an entry in the systematic register of municipalities and populated places of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it appears in standard gazetteers and encyclopedic reference works on the region. It is distinct from other places bearing the same or similar name, such as the locality named Pržine near Gradska and a beach named Pržina in Lumbarda, Croatia.
