A fortificaton in the ancient city that was unearthed by archaeologists. Photo: Arad County Council/Facebook

Romanian and German archaeologists have discovered an 80-hectare late Bronze Age fortified city located on the lower Mures River near Arad in western Romania.

The prehistoric city, described by Romanian local archaeologists as the ‘Troy of the Carpathians’, was not built of stone like the famous ancient city in Asia Minor, but of soil and wood, and is almost three times bigger. Troy was 29 hectares in size.

“It is one of the largest prehistoric fortifications in Europe, dating from the late Bronze Age,” Frankfurt Goethe Univeristy professor Rudigger Krausse, one of the initiators of the research, said.

“We identified a possible armed conflict, a war, that led to the conquest of this city,” he added. He also said the archaeologists are trying to find more funding to expand the research.

German archaeologist Rudiger Krausse at a press conference on August 3 in Arad. Photo: Arad County Council/Facebook

The city was contemporary to the Mycenaean civilisation in Greece, according to the experts, and could shed light on a period in the history of Europe that researchers don’t know too much about.

The scientists started the dig at the Old Citadel in Santana, Arad County, in 2009, but works intensified when Frankfurt Goethe University experts got involved in 2016 with funds from Hesse in Germany.

For decades before the works started, archaeologists had been recovering scores of ancient bronze objects – sickles, axes, bracelets, pendants, belts – from farmers working the land in the region. Other smaller archaeological digs were allowed by the communist regime in the 1960s, but no research was done after that.

The construction is quite complex, with three lines of fortifications, and could have been a capital of the region during the 14th to 12th centuries BC, researchers believe.

Romanian archaeologist Florin Gogaltan at a press conference in Arad on August 3. Photo: Arad County Council/Facebook

“The city was contemporary with Homer, so the comparison [with Troy] is not exaggerated. Troy was built in stone because that was the construction material in the area. In Santana, they used clay and wood and the construction complex, with three lines of fortifications,” said the director of Cluj Napoca Archaeology and Art History Institute, Florin Gogaltan.

Due to the size and the importance of the discovery, the local administration is set to turn the ruins of the ancient city into a large open-air museum that could attract more tourists to the area.

But the archaeologists say this cannot happen in the next three years because the research is not yet complete.

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