Archaeology - ROMANIA
Project Information for Volunter Archaeology in Romania - Bunloc

Archaeological Volunteering Projects in Bunloc, Sacele

Sacele is situated in the centre of Romania, 1 km from Brasov. It's the gateway to two great mountains: Ciucas and Piatra Mare. It is an excellent place for people who love mountains and the outdoors.

The city appears in history for first time in a letter of Vlad the Monk (1482-1495), one of the rulers of Walachia, to the magistrate of Brasov. The oldest inhabitants were shepherds.

There have been discoveries of a Dacian settlement in the city. Recently two doctors who are doing a lot of amateur fieldwork in the area discovered remains of human activity in the form of earth walls, rock walls, and terraces. The remains are situated on a hill near to the town of Bunloc.

The city hall of Sacele asked the local cultural organisation, Asociatia Culturala Hieronymus, to establish the importance of the discoveries through evaluation digging. On 13 April 2005 the archaeologist confirmed the existence of a series of rock walls that rise to the top of the hill, 6 terraces as tall as 2-3 meters, a circular plateau and remains of a construction from rock blocks.

All of these elements suggest a prehistoric fortification complex on Bunloc hill. They started a series of 5 archaeological digs to try to gather more information.

Some of the digs didn't go very well because of the damage done in the area during the Second World War. The stratigraphy was virtually non-existent because of the mix of earth that the area had suffered due to human intervention 50 years ago when the area was an anti aircraft defence base for Brasov.

One wall of a trench reveals human habitation in a number of different eras. There is gold in one level of black soil, and there are also pieces of pottery made by hand which unfortunately couldn't be dated. Over this level is another one made by yellow clay which is another stage of the settlement. The terraces that were discovered are made by ballast and local rock.

From information from the evaluation digging, Bunloc hill reveals a historical fortification that used pottery of very high quality. The information gathered was considered relevant and now the place is considered an archaeological site which puts it under the protection of the Romanian laws. In the future, depending of the availability of funds hopefully more digs will be done to establish more precisely the importance of the settlement.

Projects Abroad volunteers helped on this dig. The research was done from 5th to 15th April 2005. Each day at 8:30 AM volunteers went from the bottom of the hill to the site of the dig by cable car. Their job was to dig the trenches and clean the walls to try to remove the layers of earth.

Daily timetable:

9 AM digging starts
1 PM lunch
2 PM digging starts
5 PM end of the digging
Saturday the digging is until 2 PM and Sunday is free.