Contextualizing change on the Lower Danube: Roman impact on Daco-Getic landscapes

Dr Ioana Oltean

This study addresses the changing character of Roman imperial power and administration and evaluates the nature and impact of conquest and colonisation on the transformation of native settlement patterns. Building on Ioana Oltean’s PhD research, it contextualizes this process within a wider chronological and geographical framework, through a comparative analysis of a representative sample of landscapes in modern Romania with differing experience of Roman contact: Transylvania, within the Iron Age core of Roman Dacia; Dobrogea, exposed to Greek colonisation prior to incorporation in Moesia Inferior; and the ‘Free Dacia’ beyond both areas.

Utilising aerial imagery of various types, dates and sources (oblique aerial photographs obtained through archaeological aerial reconnaissance; WWII military vertical photographs of the RAF, USAF and Luftwaffe; Romanian archive vertical aerial photography; and declassified Cold War (CORONA) and recently acquired satellite imagery) and applying technologies new to the area (relational database analysis within a GIS environment), the project examines in-site and territory-wide patterns within past landscapes, both urban and rural, along functional, social and political lines.

Funding:
British Academy Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship (2004-2007)
British Academy Large Research Grant (2005-2007)

Collaborators:
The Museum for National History and Archaeology (Constanta)
The History Museum of Transylvania (Cluj-Napoca)
The Babes-Bolyai University (Cluj-Napoca)
The Cris Rivers County Museum (Oradea)
The Institute for Cultural Memory (cIMeC – Bucharest)