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Silviu OŢA, Liana OŢA
The fortress was built of stone, on the top of a hill known as Grad (Pl. 1.1). It is
bordered on three sides by an abyss (two hundred meters deep). The only way of
access is from the foot of the hill, and two parallel defense ditches were dug on it. In
the part from the modern village was left a small way of access on the brink of the
abyss, the wall between the two ditches being interrupted. A small plateau of
limestone (Pl. 1.2), difficult of access, is situated on the top of the hill, in front of the
ditches.
The stage of research
Until now, we have a small amount of information about the fortress of Caraşova.
Due to some reasons (more or less objective), there are, in the archaeological and
historical literature, some mistakes, because, in particular, the wrong interpretation of
the written documents.
Historians' interest focused on the fortress of Caraşova by the end of the 19 th
century. A special work dedicated to the fortress was not written, but some excerpts
from monographs of different counties or other kind of studies were published. The
main paper about mediaeval Caraş County belongs to Frígyes Pesty, who started to
publish it since 1882 1 , during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The same historian
offered us a correct list of the chatelaines 2 of the fortress from 1323 up until 1364. As
for the others enumerated by Pesty, they are only supposed to have really existed.
Pesty considers the first mention of the fortress dating back to 1230.
Starting from Pesty's opinion, almost all the historians and archaeologists who
studied the fortifications from Banat (J. Szentkláray, Traian Simu, V. Tufescu,
Coriolan Suciu, Theodor N. Trâpcea, Ştefan Matei, Theodor O. Gheorghiu 3 and
Ştefan Pascu) continued the make the same mistake. The absence of archaeological
excavations or of a correct topographical survey (Pl. 2) influenced the opinions about
Caraşova. We shall not insist further on this subject, because some papers are already
published 4 .
Adrian A. Rusu 5 is the first historian who published a list of the chatelaines from
the 13 th -14 th centuries, and between them he mentions those from Caraşova, too.
Unlike the other historians, Rusu took into consideration only the direct documentary
mentions (more precisely the chatelaines attested in the 14 th century), and thus
avoided the speculations (the so-called mentions of the fortress from the 13 th century).
It was Györffy György, who, in 1987, clarified the historical situation of Caraşova
fortress in the 13 th -14 th centuries. His opinion was adopted by D. Ţeicu, too.
According to Györffy, two fortifications, with a similar name, are situated on the
* National Museum of History, Bucharest, Romania, silviuota@yahoo.com.
**Institute of Archaeology „Vasile Pârvan”, Bucharest, loredanaota@yahoo.com.
1
Pesty 1882-Vol.III, 1883-Vol.IV, 1884-Vol.II/1, 1885-Vol.II/2.
2
Pesty 1884, p. 165.
3
Gheorghiu 1985, p. 42, 69, 225.
4
Oţa, Oţa 2006, p. 3-13; Oţa, Oţa 2008, p. 183-221; Oţa, Oţa 2009, p. 193-201.
5 Rusu 1979, p. 71-98.