What is the spatial link between the Roman civilisation and cultural landscape in Romania?

Abstract

Exploring the dimensions of landscape history, particularly those reflected in the present spatial reconfiguration, requires the use of models to facilitate its evaluation. Considering heritage as a contemporary production result, in this paper the traces of Roman colonisation in the landscape are apprehended in regard to the present time. More precisely, we focused on the southern Romanian territory which was located at the periphery of the Roman Empire at the time of its maximum extent. Its peculiarity is that, even though it experienced a rather short organisation under the Roman administration, clear spatial traces emerge in the present cultural landscape. The identification of visible landmarks within the landscape was achieved through a combined framework of ancillary documents, cartographic material and archaeological gazetteer data, in an interdisciplinary attempt to produce a spatial correlation between the historical territorial planning and the present landscape. Thus, the most important results of the study include modelling the spatial pattern of Roman continuity in the present landscape.

Keywords:

• Romania
• cultural landscape
• landscape history
• archaeological sites

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Prof. Dr. Ion Nicolae for useful observations and explanations concerning the Roman heritage in Romania. We wish to thank the three anonymous referees at the Journal of Maps for their constructive comments that contributed to improve the manuscript.