The citadel is situated 600-800 m east of Mereșeuca village, Mereșeuca commune, Ocnița district, on a high, isolated hill, on the right bank of the Driver river. The local inhabitants call this headland „Cetățuie.” On the west side, the hill has the aspect of a narrow isthmus, crossed transversally by a flattened earth rampart. The isthmus becomes wider to the east of the wall, forming an ascending slope. One isthmus slope had been scarped at around 100 m away from the wall. Starting with the scarp level a semi-circular wall appears headed towards the south and north-east of the hill. One of the wall extremities ends at the northern steep edge of the hill, while another was probably connected to the scarp. The internal defensive line, repeating the shape of the anterior one, lies at the distance of 40-50 m from the wall and forms a central circular platform with a diameter of 100 m. The fortified surface of the citadel is about 2 ha.

The site was discovered in 1949 by T.S. Passek. The research uncovered four Eneolithic horizons and layers belonging to cultures Černoles, Sântana de Mureș-Černjachov and to the old Russian culture. The wall and ditch from the older cultural deposits had been sectioned in 1984. The ditch intersected the cultural layers going down into the sterile soil to the depth of 3.3-3.5 m. The ditch has a width of 0.8-1.0 m at the bottom and up to 5 m in the upper part.

In the outer part of the wall, as well as in the ditch’s channel, under the black-earth layer, a clay layer was attested provoked by downward erosion from the top hill where it initially lay at the base of the wooden wall built on the top rampart. The wall was probably made of a hull of beams, supported by pillars arranged vertically in pairs. The wall thickness reached around 2 m. The inferior part of the hull, which formed the wall, was filed up with earth, and the upper part formed chambers called strelnițe. Living and household structures built of beams were found in the inferior part of the rampart. It had around 8 m width at the base and 3 m heigh and rose around 6 m above ground together with the wall.

The ceramic and amphorae material discovered during the investigations allows us to dates the citadel to the 12th- 13th centuries. It was deserted and burnt probably by order of Tatar-Mongols at the middle of the 13th century. The closest analogies for Mereșeuca-Cetățuie fortification can be found at Lencăuți (fortress) and at Lomacinți, in northern Bucovina.

It appears that the fortress from Mereșeuca represents the southernmost outpost, an observation citadel of Halici from the right bank of Dniester. We can assume, as a hypothesis, that this citadel corresponds with the town Kucelmin from older Russian chronicles.

List of illustrations:

Fig. 1. Mereșeuca-Cetățuie: 1 - placement of citadel Mereșeuca-Cetățue on the map of Republic of Moldova; 2 – visual plan of fortress (1 - excavations from 1980, 2 - section through the wall and ditch); 3 - placement of the fortress on the topographic map; 4 - fortress Mereșeuca-Cetățuie, view from west.
Fig. 2. Mereșeuca-Cetățue. Plan and profile of section through the wall and defensive ditch: 1 - south-east profile; 2 - north-west profile; 3 - agglomeration of stones and remains of grinders, in plan; 4 - plan of section bottom.
Fig. 3. Mereșeuca-Cetățuie: 1-4 - Cucuteni-Tripolie ceramics; 5-7 - pieces from Bronze Age.
Fig. 4. Mereșeuca-Cetățuie: 1-11 - ceramics from the 12th-13th centuries.
Fig. 5. Mereșeuca-Cetățuie: 1-5, 7, 9 - ceramics from the 12th-13th centuries; 6, 8 - amphorae fragments from the 12th-13th centuries.