Introduction

Paul Damian, PhD

The site located in Roşia Montană, also known as Alburnus Maior, an ancient mining center mentioned in encyclopedias, dictionaries, itineraries, as well as in the treaties dedicated to the history of Roman Dacia and the history of mining activity, has undergone from the ancient age to this day an evolution almost exclusively determined by the peoples' interest in gold exploitation. In this line, the history of the settlement Roşia Montană itself represents, to some extent, the very history of gold-exploitation on the Romanian territory.            Located between Câmpeni and Abrud, on a ramification of the road which used to connect Alba Iulia (Apulum) to Zlatna (Ampelum) following the river course, Roşia Montană represents the center of gold exploitation in the Apuseni Mountains. It is not impossible that the ancient Dacians had exploited the gold-bearing ores in the area- as indicated by the very name of the place which, according to the historian and philologist I.I.Russu is of Dacian origin, considering that the root "-alb-" is Dacian with a Latin suffix; yet, the settlement was known as an ancient mining center after part of the Dacian state had become a Roman province and the gold mines in Dacia had become the property of the Emperor who was considered the direct heir of the Dacian kings who controlled the gold exploitation. The transfer of the Dacian gold exploitations (aurariae Dacicae) under the Emperor's property (operated directly or assigned to his subordinates - the most important of them was the procurator aurariarum having his the premises in Ampelum (Zlatna), must have been provided in the legal status concerning the establishment of the Roman province of Dacia. Exploitations were carried out independently, not related to urban or rural territories; such sites had the same rights as the municipalities and a quasi-urban development. We can only make assumptions about the area on which the aurariae Dacicae extended. The eastern boundary was probably the borderline of Dacia Superior; to the west and south - the Mureş river, and to the north - the Arieş valley and the Crişul Alb valley. The ancient settlement flourished during the Roman age. Gold was extracted starting from the very first days of the Roman conquest and until the Aurelian retreat. From the very time of Trajan's reign, Illyrian-Dalmatian peoples who had been colonized to Dacia undertook metal exploitation. Also, many clerks, slaves and freed-slaves were employed in the administrative structure. A major moment in the province's history is represented by the Marcommanic wars, the reigns of Septimius Severus, considered as the second founder of Dacia, and of his followers probably benefic for the Roman habitation located in the mountains.            While the interest in ancient vestiges in Roşia Montană became manifest as early as the 15th c. due to the writers, foreign travelers on political, military or diplomatic missions or to the scholars, the ancient finds in the area became of real interest for humanists starting from the second half of the 18th c. Thus, Alburnus Maior entered the historic and epigraphic literature due to a chance discovery made between 1786-1855, i.e. the unique 25 wax-coated wooden tablets containing Latin inscriptions which had been hidden in the galleries during the Marcommani wars. Written in vulgar Latin, some of them in Alburnus Maior, others in the canabae of the Legio XIII Gemina in Apulum, as well as in a number of localities which have not been identified yet, dating back to the year 131 (the oldest board) and the 29th of May, 167 (the most recent one), the wax-coated tablets are actually sale-purchase contracts, payments of services, loans with certain interests, documents of the colleges, lists of prices and expenses, agreements of association, etc. Therefore, they are first-rank sources of legal, social-economic, demographic, linguistic information on the settlement and the entire province Dacia, as well as on the Roman Empire, implicitly.            The interest in Roşia Montană also became manifest in the period 1856-1868 when F. Pošepny drew an exceptional map of the place (Geologisch-montanistische Karte des Goldbergbaureviers Abrudbanya-Verespatak), indicating the routes of Roman age, dating from the epoch of Empress Maria Theresa, as well as modern galleries, but especially the Roman vestiges indicated as funerary areas, habitats and sacred places.            An important chapter in the evolutionary history of Roşia Montană is represented by the particular interest in epigraphic realities from that place when the contents of the wax-coateded tables were published in the 3rd volume of Th. Mommsen's monumental collection of Latin inscriptions; also, Constantin Daicoviciu published some inscriptions from Alburnus Maior in one of his studies and Ion Iosif Russu opened the series of corpora dedicated to the inscriptions from the Roman Dacia with a volume dedicated to military diplomas and wax-coated tables from Roşia Montană (IDR).            Besides the providential discovery of many inscriptions during mining, construction or agricultural works in the 18th-20th c., which allows us to reconstitute the history of the ancient settlement, also walls, architectonic monuments and inscriptions, tools and jewelry, as well as mining tools from the Apuseni Mountains were found; a series of archaeological researches were conducted at the end of the 19th c., as well as undersized rescue excavations works were undertaken at the end of the last century. We would like to indicate that, although gold exploitation works at the surface had heavily affected the area, before 2000 no funds at all were allocated to archaeological research. The so-called "investigations" mentioned by some experts were nothing more than empiric activities meant to recover certain very valuable materials now exhibited in the Museum of Roman Galleries (which also comprise a gallery in the Orlea massif; the museum was destroyed unfortunately at the beginning of the '90s).            The history of Roşia Montană before the year 2000, when the extensive diggings began, could only be reconstituted based on epigraphic sources and analogies with the history of other mining regions in the Roman Empire, such as Dalmatia, Noricum, Pannonia, Moesia Superior. In Dacia the same techniques as presented in the writings of ancient authors were used to extract gold from the Apuseni Mountains.            In the summer of 2000, upon request of the company S.C. Roşia Montană Gold Corporation S.A., specialists from the National Union Museum in Alba Iulia and the Center for Protection of the National Cultural Heritage in Bucharest made an assessment of the archaeological potential of the area further to site-researches and archaeological survey. Afterwards, according to the Consulting Agreement concluded between S.C. Roşia Montană Gold Corporation S.A. and the National History Museum of Romania, in the period May-October 2001 extensive rescue excavations were undertaken in the area of the settlements Roşia Montană and Abrud, as part of the "Alburnus Maior" National Research Program initiated by the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs in March 2001. The objectives of such archeological researches were the identification and investigation of all the sites of interest from an archeological point of view; excavations were performed in order to discharge from archaeological burden the area outside Roşia Montană, west of the Cetate massif, i.e. the locations: Găuri-Hop, Hăbad, Tăul Ţapului, Valea Nanului, Carpeni, as well as the area inside the built-on area of the village Gura Cornei-Abrud; archaeological surveys were conducted in Corna Valley; diagnostic-appraisal of the ancient and medieval galleries in the massifs of Cârnic, Orlea, Ţarina, Văidoaia, Cetate, Carpeni; investigations of an archaeological-mining characteristic carried out in the ancient and medieval galleries in the Cetate area, the Zeus and Găuri locations.            Archaeological researches carried out in 2001 were made possible due to the joint efforts of archaeologists from several institutions, such as the National History Museum of Romania in Bucharest, the National Union Museum in Alba Iulia, the Center for Protection of the National Cultural Heritage (currently known as the National Institute of Historic Monuments in Bucharest, the National History Museum of Transilvania in Cluj-Napoca, the Museum of Dacian and Roman Civilization in Deva, the "Vasile Pârvan" Institute of Archeology in Bucharest, the Institute of Archeology and Art History in Cluj-Napoca, "Iulian Antonescu" Museum in Bacău, "Le Mirail" University in Toulouse, France. Specialists from the Bucharest University - the Faculty of History, "Babeş-Bolyai" University in Cluj-Napoca - the Faculty of Biology - Geology and CIMEC - the Institute for Cultural Memory in Bucharest also took part in the project.            Archeological investigations have been carried out on vast areas of more than 700,000 sq.m., revealing many vestiges, mainly from the Roman age - the 2nd-3rd c. (cemeteries, sacred areas and settlements), as well as traces of human activities from the medieval and modern times. The site investigations revealed several areas of high archeological interest: the identification of some settlements of the kastellum - type formerly inhabited by the Illyrian colonists, located in the Găuri-Hop-Hăbad-Tăul Ţapului area and in Valea Nanului - the Szekely and Drumuş properties, as well as some Roman dwelling structures with public edifices (the Carpeni area); the partial identification of the course of a Roman wall in the Găuri-Hop-Hăbad area; research of mining galleries (Cetate and Cârnic area), of several sacred areas (Hăbad-Brădoaia and Vasinca, Valea Nanului-Szekely, Drumuş and Dalea properties) where 37 votive epigraphic altars and three Roman incineration cemeteries containing more than 180 graves (Hop-Găuri, Valea Nanului şi Carpeni) were discovered.            The research methodology employed consisted in sections opened for the identification of archaeological objectives, attempting an exhaustive examination of the respective sites. We should lay special stress on the fact that, in spite of the objective terms required by contract, sometimes aggravated by the very limitations of our mentalities about the rescue approach, the archeological investigation was constantly subordinated to the scientific rigor of a systematic research. Besides research at the surface, several investigations in the ancient, medieval and modern mining galleries were conducted using a special methodology.            The vast research undertaken in 2001 made possible the examination and analysis of several human communities from a historical-archaeological point of view, by the identification of the economic or spiritual aspects of their everyday life, thus composing a complete image of the ancient settlement.            Besides the scientific discoveries (archaeological and epigraphic), the research carried out in Roşia Montană also entailed and benefited from the remarkable participation of a large number of specialists from various scientific domains. The participation of many interested institutions in the National Research Program "Alburnus Maior" contributed to the establishment of special relations among archaeologists from all over Europe, an attempt to standardize the working methodology of archaeological site-investigations.            The site of Roşia Montană represents both the epitome of remarkable collective efforts, the victory of team-spirit without which archaeology, generally, and protective archaeology, especially, could not exist, and the opportunity to lay the foundation of a real school-site for the young archaeologists facing delicate situations and the efforts of processing an important material under special circumstances (extremely rainy season, deadlines, a certain social local pressure as well as a general pressure exerted by the media).            We can say that, widely speaking, we have reached the objectives, most of the archaeological ensembles being entirely investigated and most of the movable archaeological heritage thus following to be conserved, restored and exhibited.            Just like any other organization of that size and complexity, the activity carried out at Roşia Montană also had its share of non-fulfillment, partially remedied during the 2002 campaign. The working methodology, naturally arising from the difficult preparation of the archaeological campaign and the formation of dedicated teams, had to be established as research progressed. This required many adjustments; the 2001 database could not be effectively accomplished until the following campaign. A series of difficulties, most of the times subjective, arising between the team of archeologists who worked at the surface and the team of mining archaeologists underground could be overcome, to the benefit of the project. The formation of a homogenous and specialized team still remains an ambitious goal.            This volume, the first contribution from the Alburnus Maior monographic series, presents the results of the archeological researches carried out in Roşia Montană during the 2000-2001 campaigns, an outstanding reward of all the efforts made by the archaeologists and the other specialists involved in this project. The volume only includes those researches which could by almost completed, grouped according to their location. As for the investigations carried out during the 2001 campaign, this volume only presents the conclusions of the site-research, the actual contents of such works following to be presented when the respective excavations in those areas are completed.            Maybe some of the statements included in this volume are insufficiently documented and substantiated, possibly because of the short-term assigned to the elaboration of this complex study and also because the production of the present work constantly overlapped with intensive site-investigations.            Let us not forget that this is only the beginning and the future volumes may rectify eventual flaws of the present one.            Research of the Roşia Montană site could not be conducted without the financing provided by the investor. Also, the active involvement and permanent assistance offered by the representatives of S.C. Roşia Montană Gold Corporation S.A. were a pleasant surprise for all of us. At the same time, the representatives of the local state administration apprehended the positiveness of our activity and were always alert and ready to offer their support.            I would like to thank to all who worked hard for this most difficult, yet very rewarding endeavor.