After the Protests: Comments on Contemporary Romanian Archaeology in the Light of the Roșia Montană Case
After the Protests: Comments on Contemporary Romanian Archaeology in the Light of the Roșia Montană Case

Summary/Abstract: In this text I argue that the Roșia Montană case, which became well-known especially after the large-scale protests from the autumn of 2013, is a revealing one for understanding the relations between the contemporary archaeological practice and the Romanian society. The Roșia Montană case highlighted a series of deeply problematic aspects of Romanian archaeology, namely: the tendency to “reform” the discipline and to define its social relevance by simply adapting to the current capitalist ideological context; the absence of theoretical reflection on the dominant research philosophy (i.e. culture-historical), which leads, among others, to the separation of the practice from the current socio-political context, to the conversion of the discipline into an instrument for implementing capitalist projects, to the construction of ideological interpretations of the past, as well as to the refuge in the research of the distant past, hence the lack of concern for an understanding of the current society through the study of the materiality of the recent and contemporary past; the existence of a reflex of subordinating the archaeological practice to the “national” commands, to the detriment of the autonomy of the discipline; an autistic scientific practice, in which archaeologists do not engage with their own scientific capital in criticizing the political instrumentalization of heritage in harmful ideological discourses (capitalist or nationalist). Thus, the social relevance of contemporary Romanian archaeology is defined exclusively from outside the field, by political factors. In contrast, I believe that the relevance of the discipline can be built only through the permanent renewal of its epistemological bases and through the continuous reflection on the relations with the present.

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