Archaeology - ROMANIA Monthly Update - April 2006

Volunteer Archaeological Update - April 2006

April was exclusively dedicated to diggings in Codlea. This town is situated 15 kilometers from Brasov and the first discovered remains of human activity are from 2000-1500 B.C. (late Bronze Age) and belong to the Schneckenberg culture.

Later on, the actual settlement was founded by the Saxon colonists who came to this part of Europe around the XII century. The first mention of this society comes from 19 November 1377 when the settlement was called Cidinis. As is common in a lot of the Saxon villages, the colonists built a fortified church as protection against attacks. The church was built in the second half of the XIII century and the fortification of it was started in 1432. The main wall is about 10 meters high, and there are another three walls which surrounded the fortification.

The purpose of the archaeology diggings were to try and identify two walls which are not visible in modern times. The city hall will construct a square near the fortification and archeological research needed to be done before the new construction could start.

The program started at nine in the morning when the volunteers started the work. We broke for lunch at twelve, and from thirteen, the digging continued until seventeen. The volunteers had the opportunity to learn how a digging is done from the start, making the sections, doing the actual archaeology digging, using the trowel until the end when pictures, drawings and measurements were done.

In the area, there was a market in which gypsies were selling old clothes but we had only small problems with them. The biggest problem was that almost everyone who entered into the area started to ask questions about the nature of the digging. This is the major inconvenience of archaeological digging in a populated area.

There were six trenches started, and we found the two walls that we were looking for. One of them was around 3 meters away from the main fortification wall. It was built for the purpose of defending the main wall. If invaders managed to pass the first wall, the armies that were caught between the walls were attacked through special holes built into the main wall with boiled water and hot oil. The depth of the wall was around three meters into the ground on the outside (where they would be attacked from) and two meters deep on the inside. On the outside of the wall was plastered so that it was smooth, but the inside was not. All of this was done so the attackers would have a difficult time digging under the wall or to climbing up it.

The second wall was found around 14 meters from the main wall. A supposed third wall was not discovered because it was probably situated under one of the roads of the city, and the city hall did not give us permission to dig there.

The information about the diggings will be put into a folder which will be given to the Romanian Ministry of Culture, the City Hall and the priest of the church in Codlea. Teaching and Projects Abroad, Romania, will have another copy of the folder also.

For the next month, May, there are three main things that will happen in the archaeology program: taking the drawings and information about the Dacian falx to a blacksmith in order to produce a replica, preparing the site of a Dacian fortification for visitors, and there will be diggings in Valea Crisului village at the local castle.

George Andrei CIOTLAUSI
Archaeology Assistant for Project Abroad Romania

Projects Abroad Archaeology Centre Romania
28th April 2006

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