The first archaeological excavations campaign took place in July 2019 in Romania.
The team investigated a badly mangled burial mound from the locality of Boldeşti-Grădiştea (Prahova County), in partnership with the Prahova County Museum of History and Archaeology. The excavation was coupled with various remote sensing activities, including large-scale magnetometer surveys, also of other sites, for gaining further data about kurgans, their burials and environs. Our geo- and environmental sciences team were also carrying out various fieldwork activities. A report providing information regarding the stratigraphy of the mound as well as the researched graves is available.
The palaoeclimatologists involved in the project made two trips to South Eastern Europe in 2019. They first made a prospecting trip in May to look for suitable fieldwork sites in Romania. During this trip they selected the sites which will be sampled during the longer summer fieldwork in July. The fieldwork focused on using various types of sediment samplers to retrieve sediment cores from the bottom of selected lakes. These cores are supposed to cover the whole Holocene (i.e. about the last 12,000 years) and they will be later analyzed for pollen, biomarkers and other palaeoclimatic proxies. Our aim is to sample one lake from higher altitudes (over 1500 m) and one from the lowlands (altitude under 500 m).