The Castle Tîrgu has such a diverse selection of history that it is difficult to seperate the various stratafied layers of the cultures that lived in this area that was inhabited for over 6 millennia. Hundreds of thousands of stones and artefacts were catalogued throughout the site as the dig progressed.

The site was originally discovered by Sir Noel Christiansin, then Dr. Christiansin, while travelling in Moldova. He had come to the nearby village of Iasi to see some artefacts on display. Afterwards, he had to wait a number of hours for a train and decided to take a walk while waiting. Just outside of town was a large grassy flat-topped hill. Dr. Christiansin climbed up the hill and immediately noticed a large series of buried earthworks and spotted a small fragment of a larger wall section. The fragment was carved with a Latin incription that specifically mentioned the Roman Emporer Trajan. Writing down the entire inscription, Dr. Christiansin returned to the train station puzzled as to what the inscription referred to, as the Emporer Trajan was not supposed to have been in the area.

These later proved to be part of the missing diary of Trajan, the Commentarius Trajanus, the military campaign journal thought lost to the ages, and highly sought after as the diary would fill in the story of a largely undocumented period of world history.

The Start: A Good Place to Begin
After returning to the site the following year with a small band of interns and some excavation equipment, the site was mapped and a few test pits were dug. An aerial rendering (Figure 1) shows the large area of the site; almost a kilometer in length and three-quarters of a kilometer wide. After initial test pits were dug, the scope of the project was brought into view. Even this area was contracted just to the greater area of the castle and its immediate grounds, further test pits showed extensive finds for several kilometers in each direction.

The site's elevation is about 100 meters, with steep slopes on most sides which must have generally contributed to a good defensive position all around (and to the field archæological intern's weary days). The small river that flows around the hill adds to it's defensive nature.

Though now mostly scrub grass and reeds, the area was heavily wooded until Neolithic peoples deforested the area for shelter building and for fuel. They may also have been used in the defense of the hill as a fortified wall, spikes to dissuade attacks or even fencing for livestock.

With the use of modern surveying and excavtion equipment we are able to show detailed selections of the site but as the site is so rich with many strata it sometimes causes problems correctly identifying objects and areas.

Neolithic Beginnings: An Example of Strata Separation
Working from the earliest remains forward, that is, usually the deepest layers upward, we can see a few Neolithic or Stone Age fire pits and funerary pits or graves. Numerous Stone Age artefacts, including jewelry and tools, were found liberally scattered around the site but there were no large scale earthworks or fortifications from this time period except for these pits. Most of the pits (Figure 2) [marked as x] were concentrated north east of the rock cut between the two sections of the hill.

Three burial pits on the far western side contained the bulk of the gold and other ornate jewelry and tools. They may have been ceremonial sacrifices or graves of important leaders or ruling family.

The remains in the pits were not well preserved due to poor burial practices, subsequent building on the site and acidic soil, though a few bone remains did survive and were mainly small fragments. Skilled reconstruction of jawbones showed these people had a relatively good diet of proteins and carbohydrates.

If we look at an example geophysical survey of one of the largest concentration of burial areas (Figure 3), we clearly see a series of pits and ditches, though again most of the burial pits are difficult to differentiate due to subsequent building on the site.

Most of the delicate items, such as those made from cloth and wood, had entirely decayed. Many the of the remaining items were made of bone, such as needles and small tools, or stone, such as axe heads and flint spearheads. Some gold jewelry and fine gold woven wires, interwoven in colourful silk textiles, were found. Many decayed funerary bundles, their contents revealed under CAT scans, were found, though most were found to contain items of little or no value and must have held items of personal effects.

Because of the subsequent building and damaging of the Stone Age layers, it is difficult to get a clear picture of what life was like in situ. Accurate speculation as to day-to-day living conditions are hard if not impossible to conclude.

Comparing the Stone Age burial pits survey with a geophysical survey of a more recent medieval strata, one sees the clearly defined exterior wall foundations (Figure 4, center left) and a smoother undulation of the strata not present in the earlier Stone Age survey. Even using modern geophysical survey equipment, such as our pioneered Nano Resistivity Orthographic Probe, affords little extra detail of the earlier damaged strata.

Therefore other ways of careful examination, including manual examination, of the area must be used.

When using a Selbstbefriedigung Phenomenom survey of the same Stone Age area (Figure 5), showing alternate wavelengths, we start to see various foundations, in this case clearly showing the three stone-lined funerary pits left to right, the left one with densest foundations.

Piecing the data together from different types of electronic surveys combined with exhaustive manual examination we can gain a better differentiation of the various strata. In the quest for archæological finds to better understand history the wish is to find a plethora of good artefacts. Because of the overwhelming amount of good artefacts excavated from Castle Tîrgu, it is almost the case of “be careful what you wish for”.

With manipulation of the figures, one can see almost anything, therefore we must base our conclusions of the undiluted data as unbiasedly as possible and try to make our denouement at the end of the project constructed on just the facts. So, throughout the entire survey and presentation of the dig site we have tried to uncover as much as possible and present the data as accurately as we can without jumping too far to conclusions.