Carierele de calcar din zona Măgurii Călanului în lumina datelor Lidar
The Limestone Quarries in the Area of Măgura Călanului in the light of Lidar Data

Summary/Abstract: Under the name of Măgura Călanului is known in the reference literature a hill located on the administrative-territorial units Călan and Mărtinești from Hunedoara County, where traces of limestone quarrying have been identified as early as the 19th century, linked to the monumental ashlar masonry in the Dacian fortresses in the Șureanu Mountains. The most impressive quarries are in the south-western area of the hill, but the traces are not limited to Măgura hill, they are spread over a surface of about 2500 ha, on the territory of the villages of Sântămăria de Piatră, Valea Sângeorgiului, Măgura, Jeledinți, Petreni and Totia. This surface coincides with the geological area of the oolitic limestones of Sarmatian age from the lower course of the Strei river. The number of points bearing traces of stone extraction is very large and it represents the result of the more or less organized activities of limestone quarrying, starting in Antiquity and until the 20th century. An inventory of these places has never been done so far: historians only know about the quarries from the south-western area of the hill (even those, partially) and, recently, a few spots were signaled on its eastern side. This study is based on land observations and on the use of a LiDAR-derived digital terrain model (DTM). Several dozen places have been checked on the terrain, on the territory of the six villages, but the wide surface, the complexity of the relief and the unexpectedly high density of exploitation traces have limited this investigation. In order to have a complete picture, a long-term project is needed, with a large team. Nevertheless, the results are significant and bring this area into a new light. Not only that the analysis of the DTM led to identifying numerous novel quarries from various epochs, but it offered exceptional information on the Dacian-epoch quarries, whose organization and functioning should be priority topics of research in the future.

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