Week four marked the last day of the campaign, our numbers were cut short by the departure of the Canadian team, yet our spirits remained high.
The weather was a bit hotter than usual for this time of the year, but at least there was no more rain to slow us down, however the ground was dry and it did cause us some difficulty.

In trench A, we ended up digging out the marks of prehistoric huts, so much for the Roman part of area A. Unfortunately, whomever lived there, thousands of years ago, did a thorough job cleaning up after themselves. After sieving buckets upon buckets of dirt we ended up finding nothing of significance to our work.
After re thinking our strategy, now that there were less people, some of our colleagues ended up switching trenches to help around other areas, where there was a need for more hands. I ended up going from trench A to trench D, helping with the cleanup and photogrammetry, before moving on to trench C. I spent the last three days of the campaign in trench C. After not seeing a small find in a while, trench C was a breath of fresh air. The ever so mysterious area C was quite puzzling. The abundance of small finds and the many contexts were not helping in making sense of what exactly was the purpose of the original building.
And of course, we could not end the campaign without a last-minute find. In the last few hours of the final day of digging, we ended up stumbling across a grave. Some of us remained to dig up and document the new discovery.
I was not trained as an archeologist, so I had to rely on my colleagues to explain the finer details of this difficult yet intriguing field of study. I want to thank all of the people involved for sharing with me a part of this wonderful endeavour.

I woke up at 6 a.m. like usual. The shock of the early time is not as strongly felt as in the previous weeks. After I prepared myself for the excavation, I went outside and I instantly realized that is not the same vibe of loud chattering and laughing, a sort of emptiness wrapped the whole place. Our Canadian friends went home, leaving here only the memory of their presence.

Last Saturday, me and two of my colleagues were transferred from area A to area D, in order to help them to reach the sterile, but to our big surprise we had reached some neolithic complexes.

After a short trip in the world of the first potters, I went to area C, where the unforeseen played the main role…We discovered a post-roman cremation grave in the last day of excavation!!! And with undefinable enthusiasm we started to extend the dig, in order to expose the whole grave. We finished by the next evening. Now, being home and reflecting on all, I realized that this is the end of a terrific excavation, with a lot of events, new discoveries and mixt feelings of excitement, disappointment and joy.

Though the dig ended on Saturday, the fun did not stop! For our final excursion we visited three places Castelul Corvinilor, Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa, and the Densus church.

The castle was certainly majestic, the kind of place you wouldn’t be surprised to see Dracula show up in. The stairs were twisty and small but the views at the top of the towers were certainly worth it. It was easy to get lost in the many rooms and each one had interesting architecture and fascinating history. The castle was built in the 1400s by John Hunyadi and the architecture reflects the gothic renaissance style popular at the time. Colloquially the castle is known as Dracula’s castle, as Vlad the impaler was said to have been imprisoned there. We didn’t see any vampires unfortunately, but it was still a great trip nonetheless. 

Our second location was Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa where we first visited the museum to look at objects that have been found there, and then Matt gave us a great walking tour of the different features and history of the site. It was great to see another archeological site in the area, especially one with such a large and rich history. Sarmizegetusa was the Roman capital of Dacia and the while most of what was left was just outlines of buildings; the grandeur of the location cannot be denied.

We finished the day seeing what was done with roman ruins in modern times, visiting the Church of St. Nicholas in Densus, the oldest orthodox stone church in Romania. The church itself is beautiful, with stunning paintings on the wall and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. The most interesting aspect of the church are its stones. Building blocks from Sarmizegetusa were taken 15 kilometers to build the walls of the church. Thus the church is a gorgeous, fascinating inter-layered piece of history. 

It’s hard to believe that after all our weeks together, (most of) the Canadian team is heading home. I know that I, for one, will miss our days spent together digging in the trench and looking up to the fields of alfalfa and sunflowers and the distant mountains.

The thing I’ll miss the least, however, is the hot weather that this June in Alba Iulia has been treating us to. Luckily on Wednesday and Thursday a storm blew in and cooled us all down. While this unfortunately meant we left site early on Wednesday and ere unable to go on Thursday, it did give us a chance to go to the museum and wash pottery and bones.

This week in Trench A we were also joined by a few new members, including Titi and Vlad the beavers. While Titi failed to bring Romania luck in the Euro Cup, they did provide some morale to our group of tired archeologists.

Some much needed morale, since much of this week was spent digging up context 1205, a particularly deep context with not much in it to show for our hard work. We were all prepared to simply resign ourselves to digging until we reached sterile soil, but it turned out that hidden down on the same level as said sterile soil was a few surprise contexts. Namely, the post holes and floor of a late bronze age/early iron age house, once again proving how the joy and frustration of archeology is that you never know exactly what you’ll find. Good luck to those continuing on to week 4!

This post marks the third week of the dig, which is also the final stretch for most of the Canadian student team, including myself. It’s been an incredible experience and I’m amazed by how much we’ve done and learned in such a short time.

I’ve been assigned to Trench C for the duration of this year’s excavation, often nicknamed “Trench C For Confusing” due to the many connected context sections we excavated previously. This final week saw a change of pace as we excavated on a single section of clay-heavy soil that takes up most of the trench. At the beginning of the week it was so packed down and sunbaked that it had to be pickaxed. When the middle of the week brought a rainy respite spent cleaning the pottery and bone fragments that all three trenches have been turning up, we returned to our trench to find it much softer and easier to dig, and sticky enough to spend our break times molding it into little sculptures, because playing with clay is a timeless activity whether you’re a modern archaeologist or one of the ancient potters whose work we keep finding.

We rounded off the week’s work by taking detailed documentation of the whole trench, doing photography, photogrammetry and starting on profile drawings to get a good look from multiple perspectives. As one of the youngest and least experienced on the team, I found this kind of technical work extremely interesting as it helps clarify how archaeological analysis works and exactly what we can learn from our excavation. I think I speak for us all to say the dig has been amazing this year and our last couple of days here will be full of appreciation for the opportunities it has afforded.

AVRP 2024 2nd Weekend Excursion to Turda:
Our second weekend excursion this AVRP season consisted of a short bus ride to Turda, a lovely city southeast of Cluj, famous for its salt mine. Before going into Salina Turda, we took a quick peruse through the Museum of Sandulesti, where we familiarized ourselves with the local archaeology in the region, which spanned from pre-history to the early modern era. It was interesting to view objects on display that we encountered in our fieldwork this season, including various ceramics, bone hair pins, and an omega brooch.

At the end of our tour, we stumbled upon a lovely puppet show in the back courtyard. For those who don’t speak Romanian, we relied on the crowd’s reaction to judge whether the puppet show was great or just good. Judging by the children jumping up and down – it was excellent.

After the museum and a brief lunch break, we descended into Salina Turda – an experience that most of us have not had before.

Salina Turda is famous for being the largest salt mine in the world, with its history dating back to the Roman occupation of Dacia. Interestingly, the mine has a range of uses. It was used as a bomb shelter in World War II, and afterward for cheese storage! While at the bottom of the mine, 120 meters below the surface, it’s safe to say the group enjoyed the cooler temperature in addition to the fascinating sensation of being surrounded by salt, literally everywhere.

Once safely at the bottom of the mine, some of us took row boats out on a peculiar black, shallow lake. As an undisclosed classmate mentioned, this experience oddly resembled crossing the river Styx – both a concerning realization for obvious reasons and a fascinating one as a Classics student.

Thankfully, there was an amusement park at the bottom of the cavern because what’s the only thing better than being in a 120-meter-deep mine – a ferris wheel! Overall, the group had a lovely time. As for myself, despite initially realizing I am both claustrophobic, afraid of heights, and wary of caves in general, I had a good time. After all, it’s all about the company, right? Until next year!

I am not, by training, an archaeologist, so the last two weeks have been intense but fantastically educational. If I had to summarize the many and varied lessons of the ARVP season so far, it would serve to state that archaeological trenches are quite like ogres. That is, they are (literally) dirty, (unavoidably) smelly, they take many hands to wrangle, and above all else, they have layers.

Working in Trench C(onfusing), I might emphasize that last point. While our colleagues in A and D have worked tirelessly, moving mountains of dirt in the stifling heat and humidity, Trench C has emerged as a palimpsest of pits, holes and ditches, necessitating slow, exploratory work.

In the first week, our efforts focused on excavating a pit with high ash content—affectionately known as the “ash hole”—churning up many pottery sherds and the bones of several animals. As we dug, theories abounded as to the original purpose of the ash hole: perhaps a burial place, a feasting pit or ritual site. Most likely, it’s a garbage dump, which may lack some of the romance of the former theories, but… that’s the way the cookie crumbles!

In week two, we moved east, removing what seems to be another garbage ditch, this time spanning the breadth of the trench. This churned up some rather exciting finds, including a plethora of cattle bones, pottery sherds, over 60 hobnails from a set of long-decayed (military?) boots, and (of particular note) the tip of a Dacian sword scabbard. Now, in the last week of the season, we have escaped the tangle of smaller contexts and are turning our attentions on a large stretch of sun-hardened clay. Progress is slow and dusty but we’re excited to peel back the final layers of this trench, concluding two seasons of excavation,
Below, find a small collection of portraits from the Trench C team, and some impressions from the site!

Hello from Trench A! Week two on the project has gone well. The sunflowers are in full bloom and the heat is high as ever. Our three trenches have progressed significantly, with C and D hitting sterile dirt in parts of their excavations. Trench A continues into a refuse context from the medival era. This context seems to have disturbed and mixed the previous deposits beneath into one large pile, while seeking burried building materials. This has unfortunately erased the primary Roman context that was once there, mixing it with pre-history and medival remains. Our mountain of dirt grows as we have worked through this deeper context, with pottery sherds aplenty in our seive. We will see if anything remains underneath.

In the meantime, we will keep all our spirits high in the trenches with evening get togethers, the dj talents of Luca Saxobeat, and our adventures into salt mines from this Sunday.

The citadel of Alba Iulia

The first full Sunday of our 2024 stay in Romania meant two things: a later wale-up call, and an excursion. Where 10am would usually be halfway through a morning of work, today it saw us walking the streets of Alba Iulia, making our way towards the citadel.

Upon arrival at the first gate, Dr. McCarty commenced a short walking tour of the star-shaped fort and its history. We saw the Roman Via Principalis, the old Catholic cathedral, and the new Orthodox church, then took a short break for a deliciously cold beverage.

Next stop was at the museum, which we’d been into before, of course – – on the first day of work, entering through the back door to collect our tool. This time, however, we used the front entrance, and toured the exhibits as proper museum guests. Dr. McCarty resumed his part-time role as tour guide, and we all concluded the outing much more knowledgeable than when we set out.

After a leisurely lunch, we dispersed to peruse the stalls and make our way back to our accommodation for a wonderfully uneventful evening. Uneventful for those of us without theses to write, at least, and productive for those writing them. All in all, a successful Sunday.

The Roman villa at Oarda-Bulza is beautiful. The mountains seen on the horizon fill you with awe. The only downside is the heat, which has been terrorizing us.

My family originates from Romania, but I haven’t visited in over 8 years. It feels good to be back in the country, and even better to help unearth more of its past. I hope that this year’s dig will uncover promising results, and at least a few memorable moments.

Three trenches have been opened this year, and each seems more promising than the last. I’ve been assigned to trench C, a supposed granary, and I am filled with excitement at the thought of what my first archeological dig could hold.

The project is off to a great start, and I can’t wait to see where the journey takes us.