DISCOVERING A NEW EARLY STARČEVO-CRIȘ SITE IN SOUTHWESTERN TRANSYLVANIA AT FOLT-SUB VII (HUNEDOARA COUNTY, ROMANIA) AND A PROCEDURE FOR DATING EARLY NEOLITHIC SHARD SAMPLES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14795/jaha.12.3.2025.1376Keywords:
Southwestern Transylvania, field surveys, Starčevo-Criș ceramic, interdisciplinary methods of research, absolute chronologyAbstract
During several field surveys carried out in the southwestern part of Transylvania (Hunedoara County, Romania) in the last decade, by different members of the Archaeological Department of the Museum of Dacian and Roman Civilisation in Deva, we found, near the Mureș river banks, new archaeological sites, one of which belonging to the Early Neolithic. An interesting discovery was made near County Road 107A, where, on the second terrace of the Mureș bank, on the right side of the river valley (the northern side), at a distance of 1 km, in a straight line, from the centre of Folt village, in a place called by the villagers Sub Vii, we found an early Starčevo-Criș settlement. On the southern edge of the Folt-Sub Vii site we noted, on the surface of ploughland, three Early Neolithic features, rich in fragments of pottery, bones and stone tools. On the feature called by us Cx. 3, with Early Starčevo-Criș pottery, possibly from the beginning of the sixth millennium BC, we experimented to obtain C14 data, comparing the radiometric measurements of two bones and a fragment of pottery. In the Laboratory of Horia Hulubei National Institute for R&D in Physics and Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH), Bucharest (Măgurele), the Extracted Degraded Archaeological Material that has undergone diagenetic alteration (EDAM) or so-called Collagen Type I, and different fractions of carbon-bearing materials separated from shards were dated by AMS method, using 1 MV HVEE Cockroft-Walton TandetronÔ. Containing endogenous C14, the Oxidant Resistant Elemental Carbon (OREC) fraction complied in terms of calibrated intervals with EDAM results.
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