The "Alburnus Maior" National Research Program

           The issues concerning the civil habitat characteristic of the Roman period in Roşia Montană is very complex. Archaeological research carried out in this area was mainly restricted to limited investigations. Such an approach to scientific research was conditioned by very objective factors, i.e. private property of lands, which made access to potential sites of interest almost impossible in the past years; uninterrupted mining activity in the region, which resulted in the alteration of the initial configuration of the land due to the accumulation of materials resulting from the mining and processing of gold-bearing ore for two millennia; difficult access and conditions specific to mountain area.
           Most information is epigraphic. An approximate number of 75 epigraphic monuments [2] were found within the perimeter adjacent to Roşia Montană before the 2002 archaeological campaign. Most of them were recovered under uncertain circumstances. Though most of such epigraphs are funeral, a primary mapping of the places where they were found - where such a thing was possible - could indicate the existence of certain areas where human habitation was concentrated. It is obvious that the cemeteries where the epigraphs and funerary architecture items were found suggest the presence of certain habitation nuclei.
           An important moment of the debate on the forms of civil habitation within the area of the ancient Alburnus Maior was the finding, between the 18^th-19^th centuries, of the wax-coated tablets discovered out of sheer chance in the ancient mining galleries on this site [33]. The 25 wax-coated tablets [3], unique epigraphic documents due to the richness of the information they provide to us, indicate the existence of a number of places that the experts attribute to certain adjacent inhabitancy structures. Thus, nine of the documents were written in Alburnus Maior, two in the canabae of Legio XIII Gemina from Apulum, and the rest in localities which have not yet been identified on site (vicus Deusara - 2; Kartum - 1; Immenosum Maius - 1). The generally accepted theory is that they had been placed for safe-keeping in a hard-to-reach mining gallery, during a moment of crisis, probably having to do with the attacks of the Marcomanns on Dacia during 167-170 A.D. [4].
           The places attested in the wax-coated tablets gave rise to a series of discussions regarding the urban evolution of the economic centre found at Alburnus Maior. In this line, there are two major interpretation trends. A first line of approach tends to regard the generic toponym of Alburnus Maior as a reference which covers a number of permanent or quasi-temporary dwellings generated by the presence of the Illyrian-Dalmatian colonists specialized in extraction and primary processing of gold-bearing ore [5].
           A series of realities attested by epigraphic sources are used to account for this approach. Thus, the mention of a vicus pirustarum [6] of the locality Ansium, with two mentions of the type: K(astellum) Ansis and K(astellani) Ansi [7] Resculum [8], thewording K(astellum) Baridustarum [9] as well as the entire discussion on their location, as well as of the other toponyms present in the wax-coated tablets [10] or indicated by the epigraphs discovered so far are interpreted by the supporters of this point of view as the image of a conglomerate of independent habitations, each having its own ruling and administration [11], according to the "Dalmatic system" of organization and exploitation of gold-bearing ore [12].
           At the other extreme, there is the theory according to which Alburnus Maior is an independent structure, with a still uncertain legal status, and the toponyms are names of districts or indicate ethnic groups within a unitary habitation. It is certain that the information offered by the analysis of the epigraphic sources indicate a heavily inhabited area, a diversity of nationes, in which the Illyrian-Dalmatic element prevails, followed closely by the Hellenistic element [13]. We must note the extraordinary diversity of religious denominations attested by the epigraphs found in Alburnus Maior [14]. The image of a heavily populated area, with a progressively rhythmic development and great demographic variations indicated by the unilateral analysis of the epigraphic sources led V. Pârvan to describe the gold-mining area as an "ancient California", drawing an exceptional historical-literary characterization for the inhabitancy in Alburnus Maior: "a Californian town of an international civilization" [15].
           Nevertheless, given the current stage of research, it is very hard to distinguish which was the legal status within the structure of municipal life in Dacia, of the settlement found at Alburnus Maior. So far, none of the hypothesis advanced by several researchers could be totally confirmed [16]. Actually, the habitation structures found in Alburnus Maior are of two main types: vici [17]and castella [18].
           We do not want to resume here the theoretical debate on the legal status [19] of the two types of dwellings and neither do we attempt to exactly identify and locate on site such a dwelling based on our own researches. Our target is to discover, in an area where archaeological site investigation was almost inexistent, some habitat structures with elements that might indicate the presence of human habitation during the Roman period.
           Therefore, we would like to focus on the analysis of two of the sites where settlement structures were discovered, with elements that could argue for their dating to a Roman period. Teams from the National History Museum of Romania investigated both sites.