RESTORING THE BARROW LANDSCAPE OF NE ROMANIA: INITIAL REFLECTIONS
RESTORING THE BARROW LANDSCAPE OF NE ROMANIA: INITIAL REFLECTIONS

Summary/Abstract: The northeastern region of Romania exhibits a notable concentration of burial mounds, many of which remain still unknown. Previous research in this area has shown that most of these monuments were constructed by Early Bronze Age communities, known as the Yamnaya culture, and were later reused by subsequent civilizations up until the early medieval period. However, there has been a distinct lack of systematic efforts to document these sites, determine their chronology, or study their geomorphological characteristics. Furthermore, many of these mounds are under constant threat from natural forces and human activity, leading to irreversible damage. The present study aims to fill some of these gaps by applying an innovative approach based on high-resolution airborne sensing techniques, including oblique and vertical aerial photography, photogrammetry, and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). Our main objective was to accurately identify all of the burial mounds from the Jijia River’s catchment, in order to attempt a restoration of the ancient barrow landscape of north-eastern Romania. In this sense, a preliminary review of the scientific literature revealed a discrepancy regarding the number of existing sites, their location, and their research. However, the availability of high-resolution digital elevation models from LiDAR measurements has allowed a significant increase in the number of identified sites (up to 1,660 burial mounds) and a reassessment of their spatial distribution within the workspace. Additionally, the research included an analysis of the old cartographic sources, improving the database with 131 lost sites, that are no longer visible, even when using the LiDAR measurements.

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