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Conference Presentations by Annamaria Diana

Located in the heart of the Carpathians, Braşov was a flourishing urban centre founded in the 12t... more Located in the heart of the Carpathians, Braşov was a flourishing urban centre founded in the 12th century by Central European colonists. Over the following centuries, the settlement became a crossroad for travellers, merchants and diplomats from all over Europe and the Middle East. Braşov was in fact a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural city, where communities of German, Romanian, Hungarian and Jewish ancestry lived.

Between 2012 and 2013 a team of archaeologists conducted rescue excavations in the area surrounding the Black Church, unearthing a complex and challenging stratigraphy formed by centuries of uninterrupted human habitat, and an archaeological site of inestimable value for the reconstitution of the urban life in medieval and modern eastern Europe. The investigation of the medieval cemetery revealed more than 1,400 tombs.

The observation and interpretation of burial practices, graves goods and funerary topography, cross-referenced with the demographic and pathological profile reconstructed from the osteological analysis carried out by a pilot study on a group of individuals, are shedding new light on the life and death of the members of this middle-class population.

In our paper we intend to expose the results of an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of the burial context, and their implications for understanding the process of urbanization in southern Transylvania. The lack of funds has been the biggest inconvenient and has severely limited the range of research activities we were able to carry out on both the archaeological context and the skeletal assemblage. The latter, in fact, remains largely unprocessed. However, the team’s mission is to divulge the lesser-known, albeit not less interesting, Romanian cultural heritage to the wider international audience and in particular to present future perspectives for the Black Church Project.

Papers by Annamaria Diana

GEOREVIEW: Scientific Annals of Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava. Geography Series, 2014

Huizinga (1996) used striking but quite realistic words to describe the Middle Ages: ‘When the wo... more Huizinga (1996) used striking but quite realistic words to describe the Middle Ages: ‘When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now [...] Sickness contrasted more strongly with health. The cutting cold and the dreaded darkness of winter were more concrete evils’. This picture is particularly appropriate for depicting the ‘Little Ice Age’ (c. 14th – 19th centuries), a period which strongly contrasted with the previous ‘Medieval Warm Period’. It was a time of hardships for populations across Europe, tormented by climatic shifts, famine, epidemics and wars for many consecutive years, sometimes even decades, when seasons manifested their extremes in long, harsh winters, cool and wet summers, and cold peaks such as the so called Great Frost in 1709. Scholars and scientists have used several tools for the reconstruction of past climates and the understanding of the complex human-environment relations. The most ‘traditional’ indicators are h...

Materiale şi cercetãri arheologice (Serie nouã)

Human skeletal remains of at least three individuals were unearthed during excavations at the Ear... more Human skeletal remains of at least three individuals were unearthed during excavations at the Early Neolithic site of Grumăzeşti-Deleni in northeast Romania (Moldova region) between 1968 and 1978. They comprise the articulated skeleton of an adult buried in a crouched position (M1), and the disarticulated remains of another adult and a juvenile found together in another part of the site and interpreted by the principal excavator, S. Marinescu-Bîlcu, as a disturbed burial (referred to here as M2/1-2). The human remains are described and analysed in terms of state of preservation, age-at-death, sex, stature and pathology. Results of radiocarbon dating and carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis of bone collagen from M1 and radiocarbon dates on herbivore bones from the site are presented and discussed.

Studies in Digital Heritage, 2017

The aim of this paper is threefold: 1) to present results of the archaeological excavations condu... more The aim of this paper is threefold: 1) to present results of the archaeological excavations conducted in the area surrounding the Black Church in Braşov (Transylvania, Romania); 2) to show the outcome of the analysis of a small human skeletal sample; and 3) to stress the importance of biocultural interpretations of burial sites for a better understanding of the process of urbanization in southern Transylvania. During the Middle Ages Braşov, founded in the 12th century by Central European colonists, was a flourishing multi-cultural and multi-ethnic urban community located in the heart of the Carpathian Mountains (Transylvania, Romania), and a busy crossroad for travelers, merchants and diplomats from Romania, other European countries and the Middle East. Between 2012 and 2013 a team of archaeologists conducted rescue excavations in the area surrounding the Black Church, unearthing a stratigraphically challenging complex of structures formed by centuries of uninterrupted human habitat, and over 1,400 graves in the medieval cemetery annexed to the church. The observation and interpretation of burial practices, grave goods and funerary topography, integrated with the demographic and pathological profile of human skeletal remains from 170 burials have shed new light on the life and death of the members of this middle-class population. In fact, bio-social and bio-cultural patterns were identified through the integration of multidisciplinary sources of evidence. The team involved in the post-excavation processing of archaeological materials from the Black Church cemetery is keen to promote further investigations of the archaeological site presented here, which is of inestimable value for the reconstitution of the development of urban life in medieval and modern Eastern Europe, and to present the lesser-known, albeit no less interesting, Romanian cultural heritage to international scholars and to the general public.

Forensic Archaeology: A Global Perspective, eds. W. J. Mike Groen, Nicholas Marquez-Grant, Rob Janaway, Apr 2015

Materiale si Cercetari Arheologice, Bucuresti: Editura Academiei Romane, Sep 2013

Books by Annamaria Diana

Sauer, E.W. et al., 2020: Dariali: the ‘Caspian Gates’ in the Caucasus from Antiquity to the Age of the Huns and the Middle Ages. The joint Georgian-British Dariali Gorge excavations and surveys 2013-2016, Vols. 1-2. British Institute of Persian Studies Monograph Series VI, Oxbow: Oxford.

Hardcover Edition: A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Co... more Hardcover Edition: A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2019954229 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher in writing.

Drafts by Annamaria Diana