Oana Toda

The boat imprint unearthed at the site of the Benedictine abbey from Bizere (Frumuseni, Romania) is a unique discovery for two reasons: its preservation as a negative imprint, due to its reuse for preparing mortar, and its dating back to the 12th century, based on the context of its discovery. It has been identified as a logboat, due to the absence of any technical details specific for plank boats, and now stands as the only vessel of this type with known dating for the territory of Romania. The article also enquires into the wider historical context of the discovery, thus bringing forth the archival data available with regard to medieval inland navigation.

As part of the historical landscape of the Transylvanian voivodat, the medieval road system benefits of scattered details and general information that scholars can use when attempting at its reconstruction. While the overall situation regarding major trade routes and public roads has been looked into based on archival data alone (due to their occurrence in late medieval charters and travel accounts or reports) almost no enquiry has been conducted with the aim of retrieving accurate details about the material aspects of the presumed routes. This paper is aiming at outlining the sources available for the study of the actual road tracks, by highlighting the importance of written, archaeological and cartographic evidence when it comes to identifying and rendering these particular landscape features. Despite the general impression of neglecting the development of engineered roads, late medieval local communities, individuals and even official authorities have sometimes addressed traffic problems by developing road segments, or by commanding maintenance work for already existing ones, including some special features found along the route ways, such as bridges. Apart from general archival information on the maintenance of bridges, ferries, fords and other facilities near toll-collection points, there are also examples as concerns the construction of new road segments, the reopening of dilapidated or blocked ones, as well as dugout road lanes, engineered access roads and paved roads. However, not all of these data can be obtained from written sources, thus, compelling one to have a look at the evidence found on the field and retrieved by archaeological and cartographic research.

The topic of medieval and early modern Transylvanian communication routes belongs to the research fields of historical geography and landscape archaeology and it is difficult to approach from the perspective of certain categories of sources alone, as it was so far the case. While mostly handling written sources, historians have dealt especially with the questions regarding the major trade routes of the area, almost completely ignoring the exploration of the topic concerning local roads. This is the reason why the reconstruction of routes was seldom accompanied by field surveys. The present article seeks to fill in this particular gap in the case of the Râşnov Castle micro-region (Braşov County), where we have identified several hollow-ways carved in the mountain bedrock, with features pointing out towards an original destination as carriageways. The archaeological investigation focused on two segments, where the wheels of carriages have created deep erosion traces, especially in the steep slope areas. These were part of a dense road system, ranging across the northern and eastern areas surrounding the castle, and connecting it with the Saxon town of Râşnov as well as with some mountain roads running eastwards. The fortress has simultaneously or successively benefited of two access roads, of a segment connecting The Castle Valley with the old market town and crossing on the west end of The Castle Hill. A summit road ran in the direction of the northern hill, probably allowing a secondary communication way, with the outskirts of Râşnov and the route on The Ghimbăşel Valley, while a bifurcation of it went eastwards, towards the higher areas of the mountain massif. Apart from the Castle Valley road, each of them is defined by steep slope sectors, where the crossing was solved by carving out the stone. This particular feature allowed us to identify the tracks and to precisely map them. The retrieved field data gained credit as five of the identified roads have been depicted on the fist Austrian military survey of the region. This stands proof of the fact that the roads have been build and already in use by the second half of the 18th century, when, seemingly, the castle ceased to be inhabited. The dating of the road tracks during the late medieval and early modern periods considered the archaeological and the scarce documentary sources. The access road through Báthory Tower dates back to the building of the fortification, during the 14th century. The one reaching the Southern Gate, however, was built at a later date, concomitantly with the opening of the respective gate and the closing of the other entrances, at the beginning of the 17th century, if not prior. By the 16th century, at the latest, the inhabitants of Râşnov were aware of the advantages held by dugout passage ways. As mentioned by documents, they seem to have done maintenance work for the Bran road, in a sector where it had been carved in stone. This information allows us to assert that the local roads could have been built in the same period, if not at an earlier date. The technical features and traces of erosion identified in the hollowed segments allow the stating of general conclusions related to the dimensions of the wheeled vehicles and their standardization. All in all, we can assess that the roads in the surroundings of the castle effectively sustained local traffic, their identification and interpretation representing an important step towards the reconstruction of the area’s archaeological landscape.