Week Two Excursion!

During the second week of excavations, the team traveled to Costești-Cetățuie and Sarmizegetusa Regia. One night at dinner, Matt took a poll of the types of Sunday excursions people would be interested in. The options were: lovely hikes through the Orăștie mountains, Roman sites and museums, and quaint Medieval towns.

Spoiler alert: we did all of these things! But, going for a hike through the mountains and visiting Dacian fortresses seemed to be at the top of everyone’s list.

Our first stop was to Costești-Cetățuie, a late Iron Age Dacian hillfort. It was conservatively a twenty minute walk up the mountain from where Crișan, our bus driver, dropped us off. It was a Sunday morning, many of us were thinking, “it’s going to be so nice to stretch our legs, see some nature, and feel the cool breeze of the morning in our faces!”

We did see some nature.

Mainly, we were all drenched in sweat by the time we got up to the top. Our casual jaunt through the forest turned into walking up an incline equivalent to a staircase for 20 minutes and trying to appear ‘in shape’.

The view from the top was worth every sweat-soaked minute.

The fortresses itself is comprised of several large structures that are exposed today. This includes the foundation of a tower to watch for signals from other fortresses and for enemies. This fortress was likely governed by a Dacian elite.

Some of the structures were better preserved over time than others.

One of the most interesting aspects of Costești-Cetățuie was the cyclopean masonry, a technique used in the Mediterranean to construct enormous stone blocks for building structures. It is likely that the elite Dacians either hired Greek architects to travel up to Dacia and orchestrate the building of the fortresses, or Dacians were sent down to Greece to learn construction techniques and brought knowledge back with them.

Either way, it is fascinating to be able to observe these types of interactions through what remains of these impressive fortresses.

Our second stop was to Sarmizegetusa Regia, the late Iron Age Dacian capital. Lucky for us, one of the current directors gave us a personal tour! They are continuing with excavations this summer and we got to see some of the excavation units the team was working on. Side note: Marina, one of Mariana’s students who worked at ARVP, left early to go excavate at Regia. I can only imagine how freaking amazing that was!

Just as we were making our way back to the bus, the sky opened up and it torrentially down poured. So instead of cautiously walking down the slick stone path to the bus, most of us were sprinting to the bus. It is unclear if we got more wet from runnning, thus increasing the speed at which the rain was falling onto us, or walking and increasing the number of raindrops hitting us. Either way, we were all pretty saturated.

But, Erin, you were just complaining about how hot and sweaty you were at Costești-Cetățuie. Wasn’t this a sweet relief? A blessing in disguise?

Look, you make a great point. The answer is no.

What I did enjoy was taking the bus down the hill to the Babeș-Bolyai University archaeology lodging where students had prepared us hot soup, coffee, and polinca (local plum brandy). It was the best thing we did not know we were getting.

Oh, and of course, no part of our adventures would be complete without dogs. Here’s an adorable doggo living at the archaeology lodge with the Sarmizegetusa Regia crew.