Abstract
The present study shows the results of the archaeological researches carried out at the church of Galata Monastery in Iași, the foundation of voivode Petru Șchiopul. The greatest part of these researches carried out in 1963 and 1964 were coordinated by archaeologist Vlad Zirra and covered a good part of the enclosure as well as the interior of the church. The notable results of the investigations remained unpublished by the author and were preserved only in summary form specific to the internal research reports preserved in the archive of DMI – presently INP.
Their publication is accompanied by some notes meant to underline the contribution of these results for the medieval archaeology.
A first important observation following the archaeological researches refers to the fact that the monastery was the first complex of buildings ever built on this field. However, the most important discoveries were made in the interior necropolis. All the tombs were found undisturbed by further human interventions – extremely uncommon – and, moreover, three of them allowed the identification of the persons buried there, a situation known – until then – only through documents. The three burials of known persons are princely tombs: Maria Amiralis, the wife of voivode Petru Șchiopul and two of their children, Vlad and Despina.
The constructive details or those related to the arrangement manner provided by the author of the research, for each tomb, make a valid contribution to the knowledge of practices in the field, allowing the knowledge of elements that other specialists fail to mention in their publications. If, in one form or another, these results had been published in good time, they would have represented – since then – a good example to follow in the publication of the materials related to the medieval necropolises.