Forts and fortifications on mountain passes of NE Messenia. Conference of Messenian Studies. North Messenia, History and Civilization, Kalamata 20 - 22 November 2009. (original) (raw)
Crisia LII, Supliment nr. 1, 2022
When we started the archaeological research in the Bronze Age tell settlement and Middle Ages Monastery at Sântion, back in 2015, we paid special attention to landscape research near the site. During the documentary stage we encountered some remarks that indicated that the landscape around the site had changed radically over a few decades, which would underline the idea that the archaeological landscape from the Bronze Age it was quite different from what we see today. Subsequently we searched for the maps that allow to determine the extent of the changes in the Crișul Repede river course and to analyze the relation between the tell-settlement and Crișul Repede river. In 2022, after a period marked by financial shortages and the break forced by the COVID-19 epidemic, we managed to resume work on this site.
Geography and encyclopaedism. Revisiting Gheorghe Lazăr: Between 1810 and 1822, Gheorghe Lazăr (1779/82-1823) composed or compiled four geography textbooks for the use of the Romanian schools of Transylvania and Walachia: a mathematical geography (1810), a geography of Transylvania (1815), an astronomical geography (1820), and a world geography (1822), respectively. The first two were destined for publication in Transylvania, but his superior blocked all attempts. The last two were used in the St. Sava College of Bucharest, and – according to a 1822 manifesto – the world geography was being prepared for publication. Like most of Lazăr’s Nachlass, they have been lost after his death. The present article discusses all the available information about these books and attempts to identify their sources on the basis of contextual data. It also underlines Lazăr’s long lasting interest for the subject matter of geography, which has been neglected by both his biographers and the historiography of geographical studies in Romanian culture. My thesis is that it should be understood as part of Lazăr’s encyclopaedicism, another dimension of his intellectual formation and academic profile which has been neglected. The last section, which places Lazăr in the context of the geographical textbook production during his mature life and the decades following his death, shows that many other manuscript textbooks have met with the same fate: they failed to reach the printing press and – sooner or later – have been lost.
2023
Nicola Nicolau: an Intellectual with an Unfair Posterity: This is the first in a series of three articles discussing the life and work of Nicola Nicolau (1762-1837), a Romanian merchant and scholar from the Transylvanian town of Brașov (Kronstadt, in the Habsburg Empire). Its chapters deal with Nicolau’s family and life, the books published by him, the question of their authorship, their sources, their circulation, and, finally, with Nicolau’s teaching activity. While settling, on the basis of primary sources, a number of earlier hypotheses and debates, it proposes some new hypotheses, which should be checked against further primary evidence.
Plural : History. Culture. Society = Istorie. Cultură. Societate, 2020
Book Reviews/ Recenzii Volumul cu numărul 59/1 și 59/2 The Migration Period between the Oder and the Vistula, coordonat de către Aleksander Bursche, John Hines și Anna Zapolska apare la Editura BRILL, în seria "East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450-1450", coordonată de Florin Curta și Dušan Zupka. Lucrarea cuprinde 26 de articole, distribuite în patru capitole, câte două capitole în fiecare volum. Astfel, volumul 1 include 12 articole și volumul 2-celalte 14 articole. Studiile au fost realizate de cunoscuți specialiști în domeniile arheologiei, istoriei, numismaticii și paleobotanicii, care, în mare parte, au participat timp de șase ani la proiectul pluridisciplinar Maestro (2012-2018), coordonat de prof. Alexander Bursche de la Universitatea din Varșovia, Polonia. Culegerea de studii este însoțită de instrumentele bibliografice necesare, care facilitează accesul la informațiile din conținutul articolelor: listele figurilor, diagramelor, tabelelor, abrevierilor, bibliografia comună și indicele geografic. Bineînțeles că ar fi fost bine venit și un indice de nume, dar probabil că acest lucru a fost dificil de realizat. În Introducerea (p. 1-12) semnată de prof. Alexander Bursche sunt prezentate câteva aspecte privind proiectul Maestro, implementat de o echipă de cercetători polonezi coordonată de experți din diferite state europene. Proiectul a avut drept scop cercetarea pluridisciplinară a așezărilor populațiilor migratoare dintre râurile Oder și Vistula din sec. IV-VI, care au fost insuficient analizate și prezentate în trecut. Pe parcursul implementării proiectului, membrii echipei au prezentat peste 60 de comunicări la diverse conferințe internaționale, au dezvoltat o pagină web dedicată proiectului-www.mpov.uw.edu.pl, au realizat două expoziții susținute de cataloage în poloneză și engleză, au publicat peste 30 de articole în diverse reviste și culegeri de studii și au desfășurat o conferință internațională. Aleksander BURSCHE, John HINES and Anna ZAPOLSka (eds), The Migration Period between the Oder and the Vistula,
Human-environment interactions at Mesolithic Icoana (The Iron Gates Gorges)
2018
Located in southwestern Romania in the Iron Gates Gorges, the Mesolithic site at Icoana was submerged during construction of the Iron Gates I dam and hydro-power station. Vasile Boroneanț briefly investigated the site from 1967 until it was completely flooded, in 1969. Based on recent AMS 14 C dates, Icoana was occupied during the Middle Mesolithic (ca. 8500-7600 cal BC) and again during the Final Mesolithic ("Mesolithic/Early Neolithic transition period"-ca. 6300-5900 cal BC). The faunal assemblage from the site has been re-analyzed and the results for the mammal bone assemblage are presented briefly, in close connection with the study of 484 bone, antler and Sus scrofa tooth artefacts. Products and byproducts of the châine opératoire were identified, suggesting in situ manufacture of the finished items. The relatively small number of typological categories identified comprise well-defined tool series, the most numerous being antler bevelled tools, bone pointed tools and boar tusk side-scrapers. Our analysis of these tools was aimed at identifying the transformational patterns of both the raw materials and the use-wear and manufacturing marks, seen as an indicator of the function of the artefacts. The results of our combined studies suggest wood processing and hunting as the main activities performed with these tools, together with substantial fishing activities suggested by the presence of a FRE in the 14 C dates. Our findings provide no evidence to support previous suggestions of plant cultivation during the Mesolithic at Icoana.
Analele Banatului XIX 2021
Tibiscum is one of the biggest Roman auxiliary forts in Dacia and one of the most interesting sites of this kind. It comprises a military fort with its civil settlement and the remains of other structures related to them. The environment around Tibiscum makes it interesting also from the geological point of view. The Timiş River flowing along the fort changed its riverbed regularly in the past, causing troubles to the inhabitants and now to the archaeologists. The broader area around Tibiscum has been only partly researched and still awaits further investigations. The goal of our two-year research was a better understanding of the ancient landscape around Tibiscum and a spatial allocation of settlements and infrastructure. A set of various methods has been implemented to cover the largest area available for the surveys without using excavation methods. Non-destructive survey allowed to collect data which led to the new conclusions about the settlement complex.Following the analysed ...
Revista istorică, 2023
The city of Timişoara was one of the most important urban settlements in the southern parts of the Hungarian medieval kingdom. In 1552, following a brutal military campaign, Timişoara and its surroundings were occupied by Ottomans and integrated in the Empire. Although in the beginning was a real shock for the Christian communities inside the city (Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox), the religious life continued under Turkish rule. A lot of documents from the second half of the 16th century offer information about the cohabitation between different Christian denominations and, of course, the Christian-Muslim relations. The Ottoman authorities had established the best relations with Serbian Orthodox church, recognizing many of its privileges, even allowing the foundation of a Serbian Orthodox bishopric inside the city. The Catholic and Protestant communities felt much stronger Ottoman pressure, because the two Christian denominations tried to get support from Turkish authorities in their dispute over faith. In the early 1580, the Holy See sent the first missionaries to the city in order to help Catholic inhabitants and to stop Reformation to spread among them. The Protestant believers had their own dispute with the Catholics, but were not united at all: a few Lutherans, some Calvinists and even a curious Antitrinitarian bishopric under influence of Judaic theology can be found inside the city in the second half of the 16th century
Revista de istorie și teorie literară, 2023
A lost manuscript book. The world geography copied by Sava Popovici from Rășinari (1785): The paper discusses a manuscript book – known in a copy made by the priest Sava Popovici (1735-1808) from Rășinari in the year 1785 –, which was described in 1912 and 1915. Its trace was completely lost afterwards and it attracted attention only once, in a marginal way. Our research has led to the identification of the original – a Russian introductory book for the students of the Saint Petersburg academic gymnasium – and to a plausible proposal for its anonymous author: the Prussian astronomer Christian Nicolaus von Winsheim (1694-1751), who was teaching after the famous schoolbook of Johann Hübner. We are also proposing the most probable author of the translation: the schoolmaster Radu Duma (174?-1791) from Brașov. Its final sections discuss the image of India as described in its chapter on Asia and, respectively, its probable use as a textbook in a number of schools from the South-Eastern part of Transylvania: Brașov, Rășinari, and Sibiu.
Analele Universităţii "Dunărea de Jos" din Galaţi Fascicula XIX Istorie, 2021
Using the statistical method, this paper identifies a type of medieval dwellings common to the social elites (princes, boyars, high clergy, and urban patricians) in the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia during the 14th to the 16th centuries. Built of wood, masonry or in a mixed system, the house combines a cellar partially raised above the ground level and a high ground floor, resulting in a structure with a tower-like appearance. Its origins can be traced back to medieval Hungary, whence it was brought and imposed by the Romanian and German elites who emigrated to Wallachia and Moldavia during the 14th century. The author considers that its adoption by the Romanian medieval elites resulted as a compromise between the elites’ need to assert their social prestige, the relatively low construction costs of this type of dwellings and the practical needs of everyday life.