Finds of coins in the late medieval cemetery of the Măzărache Church in Chişinău (excavations of 2010)

In summer 2010 there were carried out the first archaeological saving excavations in the old, historical part of Chişinău. Oral tradition and written sources indicate that the historical heart of Chişinău was located in the lower part of the modern city, by the river of Bâc. Apparently, the locality emerged by a spring had already existed in the second half of the 14th century, before the ousting of the Golden Horde from the south-eastern part of the Carpathian-Dniester area in 1370s - 1380s. On the opposite, left bank of the river a Tartar settlement was located. In the course of the archaeological excavations there have been revealed some ceramic materials of the Late Bronze and the Early Iron Ages as well as numerous evidences of the medieval time. A ditch dated, apparently, from the 16th-17th centuries that closed the access to the promontory and remnants of a ground dwelling with a stone basement of the 17th-18th centuries are of the greatest interest. Here we found well preserved remains of a monumental architectural structure of red brick defined as an aqueduct constructed by A. Bernardazzi in the end of the 19th century (Bubis 1997, 59-62). As a result of the investigations in the cemetery it also can be stated that already in the second half of the 16th century the space of the promontory around the supposed wooden church was entirely occupied by burials of the local Christian community. The last burials were carried out in the first two decades of the 19th century, when a stone fence was built around the church.