Archaeology - ROMANIA Monthly Update - April 2007

Volunteer Archaeological Update - April 2007

"We learn from history that we never learn anything from history" - Hegel

Digging at an old church was not a new thing for me. But it was definitely new for the volunteers, and overall the church was special. It is the Roman Catholic cathedral in Alba Iulia. Built in several stages between 1247-1291 and 1320-1356, it has antique characteristic belonging to a combination of several styles: Roman, Gothic and Baroque. The building grew through the years and the way that it looks today is the result of over 750 years of history.

Currently, the church is going through a major program of restoration inside and outside. This year a sewerage system and a lightning arrester was installed. They are also working on the tower but, that was outside of our concern for this time.

The Romanian law says any kind of change done to a historical building has to be done after a plan has been made by a specialized restoration architect. They are required to have archaeological data about the building's past. The archaeologist needs to dig to provide this type of data to the architect.

The archaeology diggings had started on 14 march, but we arrived there in April. That was when the first volunteer arrived. Sandy was her name, well actually that's her nickname... There were several sections open in the area where the contractors were doing the work. They excavated over graves and found a lot of human bones. There was a lot of construction done through the time and because of this the area was disturbed. So the stratigraphy is present only in some areas of the digging. A lot of the graves were found disturbed by later human activity. In total they were uncovered around 60 graves, the majority of them from the 12th century. The inventory of the graves was characteristic; consisting of earrings, rings and a lot of ceramic.

We also found around 20 coins spread around the sections. In one of the sections, when the profile was cleaned, we found a treasure of 30 silver coins in a bag of a textile material.

The most important findings were those of the first buildings of the Catholic bishopric from the 12-13 century. The historical archive mentioned them but no one knew where they were or what size they were. We found three buildings of that kind. Also on one of the last days we found a tower, confirming the saying amongst archaeologists, in the last days of the diggings you find the most interesting things.

We also clarified the palace near the church. This was not that exciting because it was found that the palace is much newer that it was believed to be. It was built probably at the end of 16 century or at the beginning of the 17 century. This is just a short briefing of the discoveries because of the limited space from here and also because not all the scientific data from the digging has been studied.

The digging ended on 18 march and they bought new information regarding the history of the church. The information from the all the diggings made here by Hieronymus Cultural Association will probably be published in a book in Romanian, Hungarian and English. Next month we will go to a Hungarian church in the Cluj county. In a village called Sic. The church needs restoration and archaeologists are required there.

George Andrei CIOTLAUSI
Archaeology Assistant for Project Abroad Romania

Projects Abroad Archaeology Centre Romania
5^th May 2007

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