Living on the river. A study of the Interactions in the Lower Danube Gorge during the Late Iron Age and Early Roman Times - Andreea Dragan

"The Danube’s gorges in the Iron Gates region, also known in Romanian as Clisură and in Serbian as Djerdap, always attracted human communities, from the times of the settlement at Lepenski Vir until today. This attraction was not only down to the magical character of the local landscape, but mostly to the particular sub-Mediterranean climate of the gorges and the economic potential of the river. The local landscape has changed only after the construction of the hydroelectric dam at Turnu Severin – Kladovo and the appearance of the huge water reservoir covering the entire sector of the Iron Gates.(...)

In this book, Andreea Drăgan is demonstrating an outstanding expertise in analysing the archaeological information, from the primary processing of the finds to contextual analysis to synthetic argumentation based on a large amount of archaeological and historical data.

From the theoretical point of view, the entire study is based on the concept of contact zones, which has allowed the author to connect her results with those concerning other areas of the early Roman Empire, thus providing a more complex image of the Danube’s Iron Gates and its inhabitants at the end of the Late Iron Age and the beginning of the Roman provincial period. This comprehensive approach and its results are certainly making sure that the book will become a work of reference for the archaeology of this region, and for the specialists interested in the processes that determined the rapid transformations experienced by the communities of the end of the Late Iron Age in the individual and collective identity constructs while facing the newcomers." (Excerpt from "Foreword ")

RECENZII