Exploring Europe’s Bronze Age megaforts: Gradiste Idjos

Location: Kikinda, RS

Season: June 17, 2019 to July 20, 2019

Application Deadline: April 30, 2019

Website: http://www.borderlands-arise.net

Program Type:
Field school

RPA Certified:
no

Affiliation:
University College Dublin

Project Director:
Barry Molloy

Project Description:

At a time when metal resources were becoming widely traded and bronze weapons came to dominate the battlefields of Europe, a horizon of massive fortifications emerged in the Carpathian basin. This is an opportunity to explore one of the best preserved of these Late Bronze Age (ca. 1400-800 BC) fortifications and the prehistory of this important centre of innovation in prehistoric Europe. We also have the good fortune to have an exceptionally well preserved Neolithic village (ca. 5000-4400 BC) immediately beside the late Bronze Age fortification, which we are also excavating in 2019. 

Together with students from University College Dublin, University of Cardiff and the University of Belgrade, participants get hands on experience and dedicated instruction in excavation and post-excavation methods. Evening lectures and Saturday practical seminars provide further experiences in the European prehistory and specialist archaeological activities (including, for example, palaeobotany, zooarchaeology and lithics studies). 

There is an opportunity to work on a Neolithic settlement dating from the seventh to fifth millennia BC and a Bronze Age fortified site dating to ca. 1500-800 BC. 

The Bronze Age element of the project is a component of a wider research project exploring the collapse of Bronze Age societies in Europe and the Mediterranean ca. 1200 BC. Further details are available on the website. 

Period(s) of Occupation: Neolithic tell, Late Bronze Age fortified settlement

Notes:
Together with students from University College Dublin, University of Cardiff and the University of Belgrade, participants get hands on experience and dedicated instruction in excavation and post-excavation methods. Evening lectures and Saturday practical seminars provide further experiences in the European prehistory and specialist archaeological activities (including, for example, palaeobotany, zooarchaeology and lithics studies).

Project Size: 1-24 participants

Minimum Length of Stay for Volunteers: 4 weeks

Minimum Age: 18

Experience Required: No experience required

Room and Board Arrangements:
Students share a room with one to two others of the same gender.  Cost: 800 euro for four weeks. This covers accommodation, food, local travel to and from the site, and tuition.