INVESTIGATING A LATE MEDIEVAL CEMETERY
INVESTIGATING A LATE MEDIEVAL CEMETERY

Summary/Abstract: The mound found north of Orăşeni and west of the mouth of Daia Creek was noticed by archaeologists in the 1960s. At this time, pebble extraction was started in order to provide materials for repaving the road and, as human remains had been uncovered during this work, the quarrying was halted. In 2015, during our archeological survey, we collected human bones from the recently plowed lower areas near the mound. During the autumn of the same year, we opened a small 1 × 3 m test pit in the higher, western area. In this we observed the traces of several graves, which convinced us to plan the excavation of a larger surface. We did this during the following year, when we opened a total of five 5 × 5 m excavation trenches, leaving 0.5 m thick walls between them in order to have stratigraphic reference. The excavation area covered about two thirds of the mound’s surface, with its north‑eastern side remaining unexcavated due to the presence of a very old tree, with a one meter thick trunk, which also prevented us from determining how far the cemetery stretched in this direction. During the excavation, which lasted several months, we identified the traces of 58 graves. There were no traces of any buildings which could have indicated the presence religious structures. Furthermore, the directions in which the graves were facing did not suggest that these had been oriented toward a nearby building, but instead, toward the positions where the sun would rise during different seasons. As such, we could observe considerable differences in the positioning of graves that had been dug during the same decade. The findings suggest that the cemetery had been in use since the turn of the 15th–16th centuries up to the second half of the 19th century, with a brief interruption during the 18th century. The artifacts recovered from the 16th–17th century graves don’t have any parallels in the inventories of church cemeteries found in Székely Land. Because of its rich yield of artifacts, and also its peripheral location, the cemetery requires a much closer inspection. The primary anthropological analysis of the bone fragments is complete.2 In this study we would like to present the archaeological results and the recovered artifacts. Naturally, we cannot overlook the history of the settlement and we have interpreted the newly acquired data in this context.

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