Archaeology and Interdisciplinary Research in Present-Day Romania (II): A Look at Practices
Archaeology and Interdisciplinary Research in Present-Day Romania (II): A Look at Practices

Summary/Abstract: This paper concerns aspects of the way interdisciplinary research (IDR) related to archaeology unfolds in practice in present-day Romania – a country that, because of the “cold war,” had hardly any contact with the New/Processual archaeology and the value it put on archaeometry/IDR;1 reconnected with Western archaeologies in their post-processual phase, when archaeometry was not the primary concern, but rather how the data are interpreted; mostly rejected post-processualist approaches in favour of the old, culture-historical archaeology, which could be practiced without a developed archaeometry, for which resources were scarce anyway; where there is still no proper higher education dedicated to archaeology; and, since the end of the communist regime, that is more and more integrated into Western IDR/archaeometry projects. This is not a comprehensive study but rather one based on this author’s more than thirty years of experience in IDR in relation to archaeology. It discusses the shortcomings of the local practices in IDR, highlights a series of developments that have nevertheless taken place, and suggests a few ways of improving local practices so that they would favour the development of IDR in Romania rather than simply maintain Romanian archaeology at the level of a source of samples for important Western research projects.

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