AUTHOR: Costel ILIE, Tudor MANDACHE, Adrian-Ionuț ADAMESCU
THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE „ST. NICHOLAS” CHURCH, GALAȚI. PREVENTIVE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH AT THE POINT PROTOIERIE
Danubius, XXXV, Galaţi, 2017, pp. 99-156.
Abstract
The perimeter of the historical monument “St. Nicholas” Church is located in the old town of Galaţi, an area that has undergone many interventions in modern and contemporary times. St. Nicholas Monastery was situated on the space occupied in present times by the Deanery of Galaţi and “St. Nicholas” Church in the Late Middle Ages, as early as the 17th century. Various public works have revealed traces of the necropolis, around the church, that functioned as a burial place in Late Medieval and Modern times.
In 2013, a preventive archaeological research was carried out on the northern side of “St. Nicholas” Church. The research led to the discovery of 15 graves (burials, reburials, disturbed tombs) and a medieval dwelling with a household oven dug directly into the yellow earth.
In 2017, seven digging units were opened on the northern side of the Deanery building, which allowed the research of a large part of the “St. Nicholas” Church necropolis. The archaeological dig revealed 47 tombs, 22 reburials, two dwellings, two pits, five hearths and a potter’s furnace, dating from the 17th to the 20th century.
The existence of a potter’s furnace, the remains of the two dwellings and of the hearths, dating from the 17th-18th centuries, prove the existence of medieval habitation, that precedes the late medieval necropolis and the building of church from the time of Mihai Racoviță.