Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 31/1. (2011)
Articles
8 Z. CzAjLiK-S. Berecki-L. Rupnik-S. J. Sztáncsuj Cluj of the Romanian Academy of Sciences as well as the Mures County Museum have joint for cooperation. This treaty has been renewed and amended in March 2011. For the period 2009- 2010 the funding of the project was ensured by the grant of the Hungarian Research Funds (OTKA nr. 68824 - earlier: nr. 77325) and the support of the Mures County Museum. The preparation of the research project followed the practice developed during the earlier Hungarian-French cooperation. In the early spring period field surveys were made and the topographical data - coordinates, extents, present agricultural activity and the most important bibliography - of the already known sites from Mures County were collected, as well as the data from Cluj and Covasna counties. All the data were recorded on the digital versions of topographical maps made in the 1940s. The catalogue also included the photos taken at the field walkings which show the present state of the surveyed areas, and which proved to be very useful at the time of the aerial explorations. The airplane used for the aerial photography was a CTSW type ultra light plane supplied by the Aero Consulting Co. from Deva in both years, and the pilot was Simion Cämpeanu. A Nikon D300 camera with a Nikkor ED 24/70 objective made using nanocrystal technology was used. The coordinates were recorded with a Garmin GPS, directly into the RAW file. The identification of the photos taken from the air was made by László Rupnik, using the references of the Google Earth combined with the World War 2 military survey,1 and all the data were provisionally stored in a Google Earth layer and Excel files (Pl. l/l).2 The first surveyed area was the Transylvanian Plain, which is rather unknown from archaeological topographical aspect. After a short time one could observe that not only the territory between the Mures and the Somes is available for research from the base airport at Tärgu Mures, but a much larger territory with a diameter of 150 km. This area had its extents in the valley of the Mures at Deva and the Southern Carpathians, in the direction of Cluj at the junction of the Somesul Cald and Somesul Rece rivers, to the north until Gherla-Dej-Reghin, to the east in the Ciuc Basin and along the Olt River to the Bärsa Basin, and to the south in the valley of the Tárnave rivers. The oldest Prehistoric fortress from Mures County shown in the present report is the Copper Age (Cotofeni culture) and the Early Bronze Age (Schneckenberg culture) site at §incai-Cetatea Pägänilor (Hu. Mezősámsond-Pogányvár). The photo of the latter was already published (Balázs 2010, 16-17). The excavations revealed an intensively build-up area on the terraces of the mount in the Lechinta stream’s valley, unearthing houses of one and two rooms, storage pits, fireplaces and Bronze Age burials (Lazár 1977; 1978; Berecki-Balázs 2011). The aerial photo revealed the palisade system, the lower terraces on the eastern and western sides as well as the upper terrace projecting as citadel’, and the earlier excavation trenches too. It seems to be a new observation, that there are traces of flattened tumuli to the west of the inhabited part of the settlement. The chronology of those structures is not sure so far, because burial mounds are known not just in the Copper Age Cotofeni culture but also in the period of the Early Bronze Age. The multi-layer settlement at Mainas Bái-Fövenyestető (Hu. Málnásfürdő, Covasna County), belonging to the Early and Middle Copper Age Ariusd culture, represents a settlement 1 Magyarország topográfiai térképei a második világháborúban, georeferált (Topographical maps of Hungary in the WW2, georeferred) - DVD-ROM, Arcanum Kit. 2 One must mention that the access to the administrative maps was poor making difficult the identification of the sites’ proper topographical names.
