Ruinele unui proiect modernist: cercetări arheologice în fosta colonie de muncă forţată din perioada comunistă de la Galeşu/Nazarcea, canalul Dunăre – Marea Neagră
The ruins of a modernist project: archaeological surveys in the communist‐era former forced labour colony at Galeșu/Nazarcea, the Danube – Black Sea Canal

Summary/Abstract: Galeşu (currently Nazarcea village, Poarta Albă commune, Constanţa County) is one of the forced labour camps established in the early 1950s during the construction works for the Danube – Black Sea Canal, probably the most ambitious project in the history of modern Romania. Although the colony is mentioned in memoirs and the specialised literature dedicated to the political repression in communist Romania, its ruins have been long forgotten. The archaeology as a discipline in Romania relies on an epistemology according to which the recent or contemporary past is not the object of analysis, but falls within the scope of other disciplines, such as history and anthropology. Against this background, the ruins of the former forced labour camp at Galeşu have been ignored both by archaeological research and by heritage policies. The present paper (The ruins of a modernist project: archaeological surveys in the communist‐era former forced labour colony at Galeșu/Nazarcea, the Danube – Black Sea Canal) presents a synthesis of the results of the archaeological research at Galeşu/Nazarcea performed during 2012, 2014, and 2015 on the site where the forced labour camp was located according to information provided by former political prisoners and by local people. The basic premise of this research is that the ruins of the former labour camp represent the material memory (cf. Olivier 2008) of the communist concentration camps system and of later periods. The archaeological investigation of this colony, in connection with other forms of memory (historical sources, memoirs), may contribute to a more nuanced understanding of a segment of Romania’s recent past. The main goal of our archaeological approach is to reveal the memories contained in the site and its environment. Moreover, these investigations were done in anticipation of the possible restoration of these material memories for the public. The surveys, carried out both within the confines of the former colony and in the surrounding area, have documented 30 certain and four uncertain features (see Appendices 1 and 2) as well as various material traces from the period following the abandonment of the forced labour colony – industrial ruins, dams, basins and huge earth deposits. Two of the features were excavated: C20 in 2014 and C9 in 2015; three more test pits were excavated in order to reveal the nature of feature C19/CN3, whether a building or a simple cone of slumped earth; the excavations indicated that C19/CN3 is a destroyed building (for details see Appendix 2). These data were complemented by information gathered from locals, including a witness of the period during which the forced labour camp was operational. Contrasting with the dominant research philosophy in Romania, the archaeological research at Galeşu has revealed a different image of the former forced labour colony, not only from that created by official documents, but also from that described in memoirs. At the same time, the contextual analysis of the biography of the ruins has revealed issues that were ignored by the historical discourses and heritage policies, thus contributing to a different understanding of the Danube – Black Sea Canal.

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