A new roman post on Limes Transalutanus at Oratea

Cercetări Arheologice 29.1, 2022, 155-184
https://doi.org/10.46535/ca.29.1.09



A new roman post on Limes Transalutanus at Oratea

Authors: Eugen S. Teodor

Keywords:

landscape archaeology, mountain archaeology, LiDAR, palisade, roads

Abstract:

The departure point was the observation that the frontier road is stretched, distances between two Roman forts being greater than normal; the worst is the case Jidova to Drumul Carului, a 40 km travel over a very difficult terrain. As an intermediary station was compulsive, the first try was the eastern plateau from Oratea (a medieval citadel), for which older hunches were known, as a rampart at the edge of the precipice, seen by Grigore Tocilescu in 1905. Both analysis of LiDAR data and a fieldwalk have strengthened the hypothesis.

Evaluation excavations took place in two short campaigns from 2020 and 2021, not only proving a palisade, but stating three phases of construction, first in the early second century and then other two in the first half of the third century. Other trenches checked also other hypotheses, as another rampart, towards the (later) citadel, this one dismissed. The diggings confirmed a relatively dense inhabitance on the plateau, as well as the previously not know road, in both directions, connecting the isolated place with the entire mountain route. The real surprise was not the Roman road, as it was anticipated, but the fact that it stayed in use as late as the 16-th century. That was the road serving the middle ages fortification, along all its history, and not the western one, the one known until recently, but in use only in modern times.

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How to cite: Eugen S. Teodor, A new roman post on Limes Transalutanus at Oratea, Cercetări Arheologice, Vol. 29.1, pag. 155-184, 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.46535/ca.29.1.09

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