Digging the frontier, tackling the epidemics. Researches on Bran Pass

Abstract

The area next to the village Fundata, the former frontier between the Romanian Kingdom and Austria-Hungary, is located on the Rucăr-Bran corridor, between Piatra Craiului and Bucegi Mountains. Due to the configuration of the terrain, it was a good place to try an archaeological excavation in quest for the Roman road of Limes Transalutanus. Looking at the LiDAR based terrain-model I found yet the ruins of an unknown frontier checkpoint from modern times. That was only the first step towards a complex research, involving archives, modern history of mass epidemics, quarantine facilities and legislation, the rebirth of the Romanian Army, in the 19th century, cartography, but also landscape archaeology and the test excavations. The research was accomplished with the financial and logistic support of the HiLands Project, committed to mountain archaeology, but also a cherished backup of friends with certain knowledge in modern military history, modern architecture, or archival research. The test digging have intersected a group of buildings, very likely a frontier checkpoint operative between 1850-1880, preceding the later and better known frontier station from the Mount Giuvala, before the First World War. I would be pleased if the effort done within this research, as well as its publication in an archaeological periodical as this, would be a stimulus for Romanian archaeologists to look with more consideration to both mountain archaeology and modern archaeological sites which escaped till now to the radar of science, which are plenty.

Keywords

• quarantine
• border guards
• cartography
• landscape archaeology
• roman road