Archaeologists have uncovered a lost medieval settlement and “unique” Roman finds on the site of a future industrial park in the central European nation of Slovakia.
The researchers made the discoveries near the town of Rimavská Sobota in the southern part of the country, the Banská Bystrica Regional Monument Office (RMO) announced in a press release.
The team, led by Eva Fottová with the Archaeological Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, identified not only the remains of a medieval settlement at the site from the 11th to 13th centuries, but an older settlement dating to the late Roman era—around the third to fourth century.
The medieval village is contained within the area of the settlement from late antiquity, although its full extent has yet to be established, Gabriela Brezňanová, heritage officer with RMO who is supervising the dig, told Newsweek.
E. Fottová
The archaeologists suspect that the medieval settlement could correspond to a place known as Kľačany—the only written mention of which appears in a document from 1557. In this document, the settlement is described as defunct—it apparently met its demise after Turkish raids.
“Due to the archaeological record retrieved at the dig, the medieval settlement appears to be agrarian orientated,” Brezňanová told Newsweek.
The name of the historic settlement points to the possibility that it was originally founded as a horse-breeding community, according to the archaeologist.
The evidence of the medieval settlement consists of pits and wells in which numerous archaeological finds, such as local white clay pottery, were retrieved.
The Roman-era settlement conversely appears to have been based on metallurgy. The archaeologists made a “unique” discovery from this period, uncovering furnaces for processing ore. The team also identified associated metallurgical debris and various semi-finished products.
“Thanks to the furnaces from the late antiquity settlement in Rimavská Sobota, archaeological scholars have received a potent record of the iron smelting process” in this period, Brezňanová said. “These finds are the first of their kind in the area.”
The settlement is the first from the Roman era to be systematically investigated in the southern portion of central Slovakia, according to RMO.
“The inhabitants of the settlement were engaged in bog ore exploitation and smelting iron in simple furnaces dug into the ground,” Brezňanová said. “Multiple furnaces were preserved without further disturbance, in some instances even with the slag still present inside.”
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