Marta, Liviu (szerk.): Satu Mare. Studii şi comunicări. Seria arheologie 29/1. (2013)
Oliver Dietrich: A small bronze hoard from "Kronstadt-Galgenberg". A c ontribution to the understanding of cultural landscapes in Middle Bronze Age southeastern Transylvania
A Bronze Age cultural landscape Braşov lies in the Braşov depression, in the foothills of the Carpathians and is limited to the south and southeast by the Postăvarul (Schuler, Keresztényhavas) and Piatra Mare Mountains (Hohenstein, Nagykőhavas; cf. Fig. 3 for the following). The Tâmpa Mountain, which today enters and in the Middle Ages limited the settled area, is the extension of the Postăvarul massif of the Carpathian Mountains. Due to its location the town area is characterized by several elevations, which subdivide the landscape and give it the general form of an elongated valley stretching roughly southwest-northeast and opening up into the actual Braşov depression. An analysis of Bronze Age settlement patterns concerns thus not an area randomly defined by the position of a modern town, but a naturally well-delimited geographical micro-region. 13 find spots connected to the Wietenberg, Tei and Monteoru Cultures are known from the valley in which Braşov is situated (list 3). This high number of sites is the positive aspect of the considerable earth-moving activities accompanying the expansion of the city. The negative aspect is that nearly all discoveries are chance finds; many more will have gone unnoticed, and information on the contexts of the existing material is largely missing. For most sites toponyms are given which allow to localize the find spots to some degree. However, in many cases there is the possibility that multiple toponyms may refer in fact to the same find spot (cf. list 3). The total number of discoveries could thus be lower. Few of the find spots can be localized accurately (marked in fig. 3 by smaller points) using old maps which bear the respective toponyms, for others only a wider area in which the find spot lies can be deduced (bigger colored areas in fig. 3). The map shows two concentrations of settlements. One lies in the north in what is today Braşov 's Bartolomeu (Bartholomä, Brassóbertalan) district, where the last foothills of the Carpathians give way to the flat valley. The area encompasses two small rivers and a part of it is marked as swampy in the Josephinian map. In the Middle Ages, one of the settlement cores which were later unified in the city of Braşov developed here around the St. Bartholomew Church66. The good possibilities for agriculture in the lowlands combined with easily accessible ways into the plain and the possibility to take refuge in the mountains may have contributed to this choice. Four sites are attested in this area, but as stated above it remains unclear whether some of the finds registered in the Museum of Braşov under different toponyms in reality belong to just one site. Under these circumstances musings on the contemporaneity of single sites do not make sense. The second cluster of settlements lies in the south of the area inhabited today, in the valley of the small river Răcădău (Rakado) south of the Tâmpa Mountain and the Schneckenberg. From the Răcădău valley several find spots are known, which however share the problem discussed already for the sites from Bartolomeu. A more precise localization is possible for the finds from “Valea Răcădăului- Zementfabrik” (fabrica de ciment, ‘cement plant’, list 3, nr. 11), and “Calea Bucureştilor” (list 3, nr. 4), the only site excavated more extensively and with secure evidence for houses. The small hoard on the Galgenberg may well be connected to this cluster of sites. Two more Bronze Age flatland settlements are known from the wider area around Braşov. One lies to the northeast of the town at the southern boundary of the modern village Sânpetru (list 3, Nr. 13). This site has produced no Wietenberg finds, but still may be contemporaneous. The other settlement (list 3, nr. 5) is situated on the terrace of the Timiş River in the area of the former village Dârste, which today forms part of the Noua-Dârste district of Braşov. The lowlands around Braşov seem to be devoid of settlements, as well as the valley in which most of the modern city is situated. This may be to some degree due to a lack of research in the surroundings of the city, and the intact historical city core areas of Braşov have in their majority not been subject to construction work leading to large-scale earth movements. Anyway, find spots from other periods are known from the area, mostly on the elevations. The area in the valley was swampy to some degree67, and the high Tâmpa Mountain may have decreased the hours of sunlight, thus hindering agriculture here. This could have been one reason for the establishment of the settlement cluster in front of the southern Tâmpa slope. A small bronze hoard from “Kronstadt-Galgenberg“. A contribution to... “Roth 2010, 20. 67 Roth 2010, 18. 173
