Archaeology - ROMANIA Monthly Update - October 2006

Volunteer Archaeological Update - October 2006

October is one of the last month in which the archeologist can do digging. Because of the winter which is closing the weather is becoming colder and colder and in November the first show usually appears and the earth begins to frieze. Although I have to admit that I've heard about diggings made in February with the hair dryer near you, worming the earth, but those are extreme cases and there are not recommended.

Alba Iulia was the place of our last diggings in this year. The diggings were done in two sites and we stayed, as usually in the guest room of the local museum.

The first digging site was a bronze age and a post Roman one, the digging was done under a contract for a company "Rosia Montana Gold Corporation". They are planning to invest a lot of money in the gold area from the Apuseni Mountains and they are planning to move a mountain and a village for that. There is a lot of a controversy about the ecological impact of the project in the area but things are going on in this moment. They buy a piece of land near Alba Iulia where there are planning to build houses for the people which will be moved from the village.

Archaeological research is done in the area where the houses will appear and a pre-roman site appeared. After the roman retreat from Dacia in 256 the majority of the civilians have remain in the area and continued their life. It is true that it was a decadent way of life comparing it with the roman times. This is not surprising because the area didn't benefit anymore from the presence of the Romans in the area and it was in the way of the migratory waves that were coming into Europe one after another in that time. The inventory of the houses was poor and their construction technique was primitive. A lot of storage pits were found but some with artifacts that prove that there were from bronze age so there for before the Roman conquest. The digging will continue in this area probably for another year or two.

The next site were we dig was only 10 minutes walking from the first one. The area is called "Dealu furcilor" and a lot of construction is done by the people and probably in two years here will be another neighborhood of the Alba Iulia city. At the current the city hall is conducting work for the canalization and Roman graves were found. The area was known to be a Roman necropolis and around 1950 and 1970 archeological research were done here.

Several graves were discovered now and there are a lot of hypothesis regarding them. The main problem and the one who puts the big question is the presence of the lime in the grave. At the beginning it was thought that the people who died by plague were buried here and the lime was a way to protect the rest of the population. The hypothesis cannot be confirmed with other information from the site. All the people were buried in rave with would not be the case in a plague. In this case the first thing that you have to do is to get rid of the bodies so they usually appear mass graves and the lime is allover the body and not underneath it as in this case. The first osteology studies didn't provide information to sustain the plague. Another hypothesis was that maybe there were buried like this to scare the grave robbers but this is most unlikely. Another one says that it was part of a ritual to prevent the body to decompose fast and allow the soul to get out of the soul in 40 days. Although this can be sustained with some arguments other problems appear. Such a thing was done on that time only in an area of Greece and by the Christians. This would mean that there were the first Christians in this area which take us other problems regarding the Romanian history.

Lather studies will tell more about how the people died and if there were Christians or not and it will solve maybe parts of the problems. Only parts of it because in archaeology and history there are always questions without answers. And here is one side of its beauty.

In November we will be present to Alba Iulia to do something different: osteology. We will study the bones of the Romans that we discovered and we hope to solve some of the mystery. Although this is not exactly archaeology, it is a part, in general, of the same big science (anthropology) and it is a discipline quite rare not only in Romania but also in other countries.

George Andrei CIOTLAUSI
Archaeology Assistant for Project Abroad Romania

Projects Abroad Archaeology Centre Romania
6th November 2006

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