Early Iron Age settlement in Ţahnăuţi, Rezina District

The site (47° 43.652'N, 28° 53.517'E) is located to the right of the R13 national road, 1.3 km southeast of Ţahnăuţi village and is situated on a slope slightly inclined to the southwest, on the edge of the forest. The settlement has an oval shape with the dimensions of about 100 × 300 m. It was discovered in 1951 by the Slavic-Dniester Expedition of the Institute of History of Material Culture of the USSR Academy of Sciences led by G.B. Fyodorov. In the same year, O.N. Melnikovskaya performs two small-scale surveys (10 × 4 m and 4 × 4 m) on the site, the results of which were published in 1954. In 1979 the investigations were resumed by A.I. Melyukova, two excavations were carried out with a total area of 133 sq.m. As a result of archaeological research, several complexes (five pits and a ditch) were discovered, as well as numerous archaeological finds attributed by the author to the Saharna-Solonceni culture. The finds from this settlement have been repeatedly published (Melyukova 1982, Melyukova 1989, Kashuba 2000, etc.), but the complexes discovered in Ţahnăuţi remain unpublished. In 2016-2017, with the aim of localizing (GPS) and checking the state of the site, the staff of the Research Laboratory for Thracology of the Moldova State University carried out a number of field investigations in the microzone. As a result, many fragments of ceramics attributed to the Cozia-Saharna culture were collected. It has also been established that the settlement is located to the southeast of Ţahnăuţi, but not to the northeast, as it appears in previous publications.