The field team

Four weeks of intensive fieldwork represented a great opportunity for researchers and students to examine an urban area of the colonia Aurelia Apulensis, next to the insula of the Liber Pater sanctuary, unearthed by previous archaeological excavations. 

In this year the site hosted many students from Germany, Hungary and Romania, eager to experience and learn interdisciplinary and innovative methods used during field work. Due to the enthusiastic team-work, by the end of this season the remains of two different stone-buildings were identified. The functionality of the buildings, with traces of massive destruction and demolition, could not be clarified yet, this remaining the main task for the next campaign.

 

Unearthing the remains of the aforementioned constructions required a constant effort from the team. Removing the compact and thick clay alluvium layers covering the ruins required a wide range of techniques and use of tools: from mattocking and shoveling to cleaning with the hoe, trowel and brush. The members of the team could easily accomplish the basic field work techniques and learned the proper use of tools, even if the wheelbarrows were often quite heavy for some of us.

The field activity of the students was not limited to “digging” and unloading wheelbarrows. They were actively involved in the documentation process. There is no team member who did not take his share in this bustle. Everybody learned how to register and collect small-finds, how to measure them with the total station. Planning and drawing different contexts as well as completing context sheets were also among every student’s task.

Team-members were also initiated in other interdisciplinary domains like topography, archaeobotanics and GIS. They could learn on site how to use the total station, how to collect and sieve soil samples and they also took part in the topographical survey of the archaeological location. 

Beside the multidisciplinary training and hard physical work, the good atmosphere and the excellent team work have also contributed to the success of this archaeological campaign. Mission accomplished! 

Wraping up the site

 

At the end of the month the time came to backfill the site. In a cloudy and windy day a team of heroes preserved the excavated layers with plastic sheets and gazed for some hours how the JCB levels the area which was a few hours ago still THE TRENCH.

Wraping up the drawings

After a four week excavation season with a lot of physical effort, documentation work and learning/teaching experience the field team started to wrap up the work. 

The final plans and photos are being made since yesterday so everybody can test his "drawing" skills, but it is also important that all the data is as accuerate as possible. 

Apulum will be next year definitely RELOADED!

Drawing pottery

Drawing pottery is going on - training some students with good  results. Even complicated vessels like decorated turibula can be done after one day of exercise. Some students do enjoy staying  in the lab
after weeks on site.

Why is pottery drawing so important?

Pottery is a tool to date the contexts and learn more about the function and the economical background of the site. Therefore we need the drawings of the fragments to determine the types of the vessels.
No artistic skills are needed to draw pottery: everybody can learn  it! But some students have more patience than others...

Climbing to Piatra Craivii

On Saturday, after the site tour, a small but very enthusiastic group of researchers and students climbed up to Piatra Craivii in the Trascău Mountains. This 1078 meters high peak is famous not only because of its fascinating shell-shaped white cliff but also for its historical background.

Some thousand years ago a Dacian (late Iron Age) fortification stood on the top of Piatra Craivii, and the remains of ancient life was also visible on the slopes around the peak.

Our hikers came up from the little village of Craiva and after exhausting climbing they reached the final ridge of the hill. From that point we followed the blue hiking trail sign to the top, where an iron cross represented the end of our efforts and rewarded us with a breathtaking view. 

Visiting history

On the third weekend of the project, the group had an excursion to two of the most important historical sites of the region – to the Hunedoara/Vajdahunyad Castle and to the ruins of the Roman settlement Colonia Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa. The Hunedoara Castle is a late Gothic-Renaissance style castle which was mainly built in the second half of the 15^th century. Its construction was started by Jancu de Hunedoara/János Hunyadi, the famous governor and the father of King Matia Corvin/Mátyás Hunyadi who was one of the most prominent rulers of medieval Hungary.

Colonia Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa was perhaps the most important settlement of Roman Dacia. It was founded right after the conquest of Dacia by the orders of Emperor Traianus, as it is attested by an inscription: Auspiciis / [Imp(eratoris)] Caes(aris) divi Nervae f[il(ii)] / [Nervae] Traiani Augusti / [Germ(anici) Dac(ici)] condita colonia / [Ulpia Traiana Augusta] Dacica / [Sarmizegetusa] per / [D(ecimum) Terenti]um Scaurianum / [legatum] eius pro pr(aetore) / [------? (Translation: “By the orders of Imperator Caesar Nerva Traianus Augustus Germanicus Dacicus, son of the divine Nerva, the colony of Ulpia Traiana Augusta Dacica Sarmizegetusa was settled by Decimus Terentius Scaurianus, his governor.”) The settlement was the seat of the financial procurator of Dacia, and the concilium provinciae (a religious festivity in honour of Rome and the Emperor) was also held in the city annually.

The world of pottery

Different steps of the pottery processing have been going on in the restorer’s laboratory and also in the finds processing room from the basement. The lately enormous amount of pottery (9 crates) is washed and dried in the upper lab and this is the location of the primary recording of the ceramic as well.



The pottery recording sheet contains different ware types and functional categories and helps us to have an overview about all the ceramic material. In the finds processing room students learn how to draw the typical pottery shards (rim, base, decorated body fragments, etc.) and record them in the pottery database. Many interesting fragments (turibula, paterae, miniature vessels, etc.) are already recorded in the database and some of them are carefully cleaned from the sintering crust as well. A different part of the pottery recording is the identification of ceramic fabrics and the definition of the local and imported wares, from which important information can be extracted related to the economic connections of Apulum and refers also to the consumption habits of the local population.

From the world of small finds

During the last two weeks of the excavation, a large number of various small finds have been unearthed by the archaeologists and students on the site, which are being processed in the lab. Until now, more than six hundred finds have been processed – all of them drawn, measured and recorded into our database, and some of them restored as well. Among them are silver and bronze coins, fine imported pottery, worked bone objects (e. g. hairpins, needles), glass beads, various iron and bronze objects (e. g. brooches, belt fittings) and worked stone fragments (e. g. statue fragments). All of these finds are of utmost importance, since they carry some extra information and through their analysis in the lab, they help us to improve our knowledge about the functionality, chronology and the general land use of our site and its vicinity in the Roman period.

GIS mapping team

In parallel with the excavation, a group of researchers and students, called the GIS mapping team, work in the lab. This team is dealing with all the drawn documentation and data which has geographic or topographic information.



Firstly the plans which correspond to the individual archaeological contexts of the excavation are scanned and rectified based on the grid coordinates. Every drawing is digitised and the data is stored in the form of vector layers. We use different layers depending on the type of the information, for example: contexts line, elevation data or find spots of small finds.



With the help of a geographic information system our research has an up-to-date background to analyze, display and understand different aspects of the excavation.

Lecture series

At the first two days of the IP a block of introductory lectures have been held, which guided us into the art and archaeology of the Roman period, the town of Apulum and the research methodology of the project. The lectures of the first week were related to the history of the city, the archaeological discoveries, cultic discoveries and many other interesting topics, which offered a wide knowledge about the location where the excavation is taking place, in the most entertaining way. Besides the large amount of information, we were delighted by the interactive methods that were used during the presentations. On the third day the participants visited the city and the archaeological museum, which further expanded the knowledge of the students about the history and beautiful monuments of Alba Iulia.

News from the lab

In parallel with the excavation, a small group of archaeologists, researchers and students, called the lab-people, work at the university, located in the centre of the fortress, right next to the principia of legionary fort. This laboratory is dealing with all the finds that come from the site: pottery, animal bones and small finds.
All those ceramic fragments that are collected at the excavation are washed, quantified and the typical fragments are photographed and drawn, so afterwards a great deal of statistical information helps us to understand different aspects of the site.



The small find-team has the honor of recording all the finds belonging to the special material categories: glass, metal, worked bone, stone and rare types of pottery. They make the small find cards, they draw it, take photos and measurements of all the pieces, and they also introduce all this information – along with others coming from the site – into a database. They look for analogies and try as hard as they can to date the different contexts of the site.



The badly preserved finds or many fragments of the same vessel are sent to the restoration laboratory, where from the ashes of old things some marvelous pieces are reborn.
In all these processes from day to day a larger amount of students are taking part, learning the basics of pottery and small find registering and restoration.

Excursion to Alburnus Maior

On the 25th of August, the participants of the Erasmus IP visited Roşia Montană/Verespatak (Alburnus Maior), which was one of the most important gold mining sites of Roman Dacia. Several mining galleries have been identified during the archaeological researches, and the site is also famous as the findspot of the famous Roman wax writing tablets. Besides these unique finds, the civilian settlement of Alburnus Maior has also yielded some important epigraphic monuments. These altars and stela frequently attest the presence of Illyrian miner colonists, who lived in the settlement and worked in the mines, since they were experts in gold and silver mining in their homelands.
Beneath the small town of Rosia Montana one of the largest gold deposit in the World are buried, so due to the fact that the joint venture Rosia Montana Gold Corporation (RMGC) secured the license to extract the deposit by strip-mining, the country and also the wider public is divided because of its environmental issues and the endangerment of the historical and archaeological heritage of the area.

The project T-Shirt

We finished the brainstorming about the project T-shirt. Here is the result!

Urban and cultic space in Roman Apulum: An archaeological field school

The international project Urban and cultic space in Roman Apulum financed by the EU through the Erasmus Intensive Programmes is the result of cooperation between four universities from three countries (Romania, Germany, and Hungary).



The project will take place in Alba Iulia (Alba County, Romania). The ancient Apulum was one of the most significant urban centres of the Roman province of Dacia during the 2nd–3rd centuries AD and therefore it has been rather intensively researched. During the late nineties – early two thousands one of the most important international excavations, the so-called Apulum Project, unearthed a shrine dedicated to Liber Pater situated in an intensively used urban area (workshops, living quarters, cultic space) of the Roman Colonia Aurelia Apulensis. During the excavation a large amount of spectacular small finds were discovered as well. In the last days a new building and an altar dedicated to Deus Invictus was identified. The scientific aim of the project is the archaeological research of this structure which, on the grounds of the situation of the nearby area, seems to offer an ideal opportunity both for the specialists and students interested in Roman provincial archaeology.
 50 students and 14 lecturers from the mentioned three countries will participate in the project. The excavation will be organized between 17th August and 15th September 2013 in the form of a summer field school where emphasis will be laid on the training of the students. The interdisciplinary project will involve several disciplines, like archaeology, art history, restoration and conservation, archaeobotanics, aerial archaeology, geophysics, topography, and architecture. The training will be based on the combination of theory and practice. The former will be organized in the frame of introductory seminars where the students will have the opportunity to learn about the archaeology and art of the Roman period in general, and of the province Dacia in particular, as well as about the theoretical aspects of the modern methods used by the abovementioned disciplines. Each student will receive a handout of all the lectures which will also be uploaded on the internet. The practical training will involve mainly archaeological field work, but each of the students will have the possibility to participate in the laboratory work as well as in the non-destructive survey activities.
A secondary goal of the project is to offer the possibility for the foreign students to learn about the historical and cultural heritage of Transylvania (for this purpose an excursion will be organized in each weekend) as well as to help the strengthening of the relationship between the organizing institutions and the development of new professional and personal relations between students and specialists from different countries.

Participating institutions:
Universitatea 1Decembrie 1918 Alba Iulia (RO) – host institution
Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca (RO)
Universität zu Köln (D)
Pécsi Tudományegyetem (HU)