Prerequisite:

Admission open to all students, with an interest in medieval history and archaeology. Students are recommended, but not required, to take EUH-3323 (Medieval Eastern Europe) or EUH-3182 (Medieval Archaeology) in advance.

Enrollment:

For a summer period of six weeks, the course enrollment is no more than 10 students. Students taking this course cannot re-take it for more academic credit.
 
 

Credit

This course is offered for six (6) semester hours of coursework. The credit for these hours is to be applied entirely to History (HIS-4956). The course is offered in cooperation with the Institute of Archaeology in Cluj-Napoca  and will take place in Lazuri, district Satu Mare (Romania). Classes will be taught , using lectures and class discussions, supplemented by on-site visits, laboratory work and fieldwork. Participation in an ongoing research excavation will be an integral part of the course. Two week-end field trips are included in the course schedule. For more details, see the handout.

Textbooks:

• Kevin Greene. Archaeology. An Introduction. The History, Principles and Methods of Modern Archaeology. 3rd edition. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1995 [hereafter Greene]; on two-hour reserve in Library West
• Coursepack

Assignments:

There is no attendance policy, but you are responsible for attending all lectures and reading the required texts. The basis for evaluation of performance will be class participation, two exams, and satisfactory fieldwork. The exams will consist of  two parts: an identification and/or multiple-choice part, and a short essay, in which you will be asked to synthesize your knowledge of the topic, dropping in facts to show that you understand the concrete aspects of that topic. Only the first exam will be cumulative. In other words, the second examination will cover only the material since the first examination. Make-up exam will be given for very serious reasons, in which case you will have to produce some official proof. Each exam counts for ten percent of the final grade. The fieldwork component will count for 70 percent, of which forty percent represents the journal kept during the four weeks of fieldwork. The remaining 1ten percent of your overall grade is for participation in class discussions.

Course weekly schedule (lectures and discussions):

May 12: Introduction.  What is medieval archaeology?

• see also a short essay on artifacts

• Greene 8-36
• Timothy Champion, "Medieval archaeology and the tyranny of the historical record," in From the Baltic to the Black Sea. Studies in Medieval Archaeology, ed. by David Austin and Leslie Alcock (London, 1990), pp. 79-95 (Coursepack)
• see a brief presentation of Thomsen's Three-Age system, as well as the short biographies of Gustaf Kossinna and Oskar Montelius
• see Jennifer Stephens's essay on the influence of A. H. Lane-Fox Pitt Rivers on the development of modern archaeology

• Greene 159-184
• see also Dietrich Hakelberg, "Blicke in die vaterländische Vorzeit - Regional and national identities and the history of German archaeology"
• see also Holger Grönwald, Raiko Krauß and Gerson H. Jeute, "Ethnoarchaeology in Bulgaria"

• Greene 37-100
• see some aerial photographs and a few applications of aerial archaeology
• see also a GIS application to an archaeological project in Burgundy (France)
• visit the site of the Harris Matrix

Greene 101-129

Marek Krapiec, "Dendrochronological dating of early medieval fortified settlements in Poland," in Frühmittelalterliche Burgenbau in Mittel- und Osteuropa. Tagung, Nitra, vom 7. bis 10. Oktober 1996, ed. by Joachim Henning and Alexander T. Ruttkay (Bonn, 1998), pp. 257-67 (Coursepack)

see a brief presentation of the principles of radiocarbon dating and a short essay on luminiscence dating of pottery

visit the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona

• Jozef Zábojník, "On the problems of settlements of the Avar Khaganate period in Slovakia," Archeologické rozhledy 40 (1988), 401-37 (Coursepack)
• Ivana Pleinerová, "Brezno: experiments with building Old Slavic houses and living in them," Památky Archeologické 77 (1986),104-76 (Coursepack); see also images of the archaeological experiment with building and living in early medieval SFBs and an image of a SFB from the contemporary site in Roztoky, near Prague
• Magdalena Beranová, "Types of Slavic agricultural production in the 6th-12th centuries," Ethnologia Slavica 16 (1984), 7-48 (Coursepack)
• for an example of a SFB without either posts or hearting facility, see feature 9 from Horgos (Serbia)
• for an example of an early medieval ground-level building, see feature 6 from Horgos (Serbia)
• see also a general view of the 2002 excavations in Lazuri, as well as pictures of the outline of an SFB on the point of being excavated, an excavated SFB, and shards of associated pottery
• see also a map of the most important sites in Eastern Europe producing evidence of the same date as and comparable with that from Lazuri

• Almuth Alsleben, Ingmar Jansson, Thomas Hammar, et al. "Palaeobotanical studies on the Novgorod Land, ca. 400-1200 AD," Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 23 (1993), 527-35 (Coursepack)
• Sándor Bökönyi, "The development of stockbreeding and herding in medieval Europe," in Agriculture in the Middle Ages: Technology, Practice, and Representation, ed. by Del Sweeney (Philadelphia, 1995), pp. 41-61 (available on-line as e-book)
• László Bartosiewicz, "Mobile pastoralism and meat consumption: an archaeozoological perspective," in Tender Meat under the Saddle: Customs of Eating, Drinking and Hospitality among Conquering Hungarians and Nomadic Peoples. Ed. by József Laszlovszky (Krems, 1998), pp. 157-178 (Coursepack)
• for a minimal bibliography on paleoethnobotany and its applications, see the Dung File; for a complete list of web sources on zooarchaeology, visit the Zooarchaeology Web Page

• Andrzej Buko, "Pottery, potsherds and the archaeologist: an approach to pottery analyses," in Theory and Practice of Archaeological Research, ed. by Stanislaw Tabaczynski (Warsaw, 1998), pp. 381-408 (Coursepack); see Buko's Vessel Shape Family criteria and measurements used for vessel shape analysis based on vessel ratios
• Paul Barford and Ewa Marczak, "Peasant households, potters, and phasing: early medieval ceramics from Podeblocie, Poland." Archaeologia Polona 30 (1992), 127-49 (Coursepack)
• Zdenek Smetánka and Bohumil Stverák, "X-ray fluorescent analysis of gold and gilded jewels from the cemetery in Lumbe gardens at Prague Castle," Archeologické rozhledy 44 (1992), 418-30 (Coursepack)
• Florin Curta, "Blacksmiths, warriors and tournaments of value: dating and interpreting early medieval hoards of iron implements in Eastern Europe," Ephemeris Napocensis 7 (1997), 211-68 (Coursepack)
• see an introduction and samples of medieval pottery
• see examples of hand- and wheel-made pottery found in association within sixth- to seventh-century SFBs in Vadu Codrii (Romania)
• see examples of clay pans from sixth- to seventh-century sites in Romania
• see examples of pottery ornamentation; see an example of late sixth-century stamped pottery from Romania
• see a chart for estimating the amount of inclusions in tempered pottery clay and a scale for sorting pebble inclusions
• see two examples of kilns found on sixth- to seventh-century sites in Romania
• see an earring with a star-shaped pendant found in Lazuri and a hoard of iron implements and weapons found in Sebenje (Slovenia)

• Lewis R. Binford, "Mortuary practices: their study and their potential,"in Approaches to the Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices, ed. by James A. Brown (Ann Arbor, 1971), pp. 6-29 (Coursepack)
• A. Pásztor and T. Vida, "Avar period cemetery at Budakalász. A preliminary archaeological report on the excavations of the Avar period cemetery of Budakalász-Dunapart," Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 47 (1995), 215-20 (Coursepack)
• Falko Daim, "Byzantine belts and Avar birds. Diplomacy, trade, and cultural transfer in the eighth century," in The Transformation of Frontiers. From Late Antiquity to the Carolingians, ed. by Walter Pohl, Ian Wood, and Helmut Reimitz (Leiden/Boston/Cologne, 2001), pp. 143-88 (Coursepack)
• Milan Stloukal, "The palaeodemography of medieval populations in Czechoslovakia," in From the Baltic to the Black Sea. Studies in Medieval Archaeology, ed. by David Austin and Leslie Alcock (London, 1990), pp. 209-15 (Coursepack)

          Program costs  (housing, meals, excursion)  -       $572
          Tuition & fees                                             -    $1,481
          Total cost                                                   -    $2,053

Airfare tickets, passports, visas, adequate medical insurance (including emergency repatriation insurance), and other travel expenses are the responsibility of students. Upon request, assistance with group rates for airfare may be provided.

The excavation site is located in Lazuri, Satu Mare district, about 6 miles from the border between Romania, Hungary, and Ukraine, 5 miles north from Satu Mare, 107 miles north-west from Cluj-Napoca and 380 northwest Bucharest. Housing and meals will be offered in a B&B motel in Satu Mare, which also offers breakfast and packed lunch. There will be field trips around the area, and a van may be rented at a rate of $50-60 per day (included in the total cost above).
 
 

© 2003 Florin Curta