Vestigii antice și medievale documentate în vechi descrieri ale Constanței: pe urmele lui Marin Ionescu-Dobrogianu
Antique and Medieval Remains Documented in Old Descriptions of Constanța: In the Footsteps of Marin Ionescu-Dobrogianu

Summary/Abstract: Nowadays, Constanța is the largest city in Dobruja (Romania), but also the heir of an important urban centre in the Antiquity, named Tomis. During the Roman occupation of these lands, Tomis was a major western Black Sea port and also the capital of Scythia province in the Late Antiquity. The peninsula where the antique city progressively developed was also inhabited in the Middle Ages, used mostly for commercial and less frequently for military purposes by the Byzantines, Italians, and later by the Ottomans. From the former Ottoman settlement the modern city developed starting with the last decades of the 19th century. In this general context, characterized also by uneven research depending on the historical period (i. e. proportional to the available sources), an uncomfortable question arises: was there or was it not some sort of continuity between the impressive antique structures (some of which were well documented) and the following ones of the Middle and Modern Ages? As a consequence, are there any elements of the modern city’s configuration heirs of the antique ones? The topic is indirectly addressed here, by investigating old descriptions of the city in our search of archaeological clues.In this paper I have examined the archaeological relevance of an older but extensive monograph of the city, written in 1931 by Marin Ionescu-Dobrogianu. Although having a military career, the author was a passionate not only about the city of Constanța but also about Dobruja and their geography and history. When he wrote this book he had been an inhabitant of our city for about 40 years of his adult life, thus being himself a valuable witness of the modern city’s development, which basically started from scratch – a ruined and almost depopulated settlement devastated by19th century Ottoman-Russian wars. It is presumable that the building sites of that period revealed to the contemporaries many more antique structures than the modern archaeologists of the 19th got the chance to record. In a nutshell, his book is no more than a compilation of data and quotes from different sources (carefully noted, though), set in a chronological order and, where suitable, marked by the author’s own addenda. However, one must note the boldness of writing a history of Constanța throughout all times – an unique approach, as far as I know, as historians usually and currently deal only with their own period of expertise, and no efforts had been made in order to unite knowledge into a coherent story of this important historical city. For these reasons, I’ve considered Dobrogianu’s book the appropriate resource for starting my investigations on the city’s continuity thesis. Although extensive, it was not possible to include in this paper all the data from Dobrogianu’s book which is relevant for archaeological purposes. I have selected three large recurrent topics: A. The general topography of the Peninsula; B. Visible “old” constructions on diffuse areas and C. Visible “old” constructions in precise, identifiable locations documented by various witnesses, including the author, leaving aside for future occasions subjects such as the mobile assets (especially architectural fragments and inscriptions), building material reuse (spolia) and the post-antique and premodern landscape – each of them with a certain interest for our main topic.After introductions (delimitating the subject, sources and approach), the first part of the paper includes the accounts on the general topography of the Peninsula (section A), which are partially complemented by info on historical buildings (sections B1, B4), suggesting that most of the topographical “accidents” (such as large ravine) have or might have an anthropic cause. Another accounts series (section B2) offers some arguments – although in an indirect manner – for the yet controversial issue of the perimetral fortifications in the Antiquity. Perhaps the most interesting part of the paper is where I correlate accounts on the so-called “Genovese storerooms” (section B3), from which it results, with high probability, that the storerooms were in fact not Genovese, but Roman, that what we see today under the so-called “Mosaic Edifice” is just a small fragment from the tens (or maybe hundreds) of storerooms which equipped the harbour in the Roman period, and that some of them were still in use in the 17th century (and maybe later on). The idea of the Roman harbour fitted along the entire south-western shore of the Peninsula was clearly presented by Natalia Toma (2010), except for the mention that by fitting we understand not only terraces, but also storerooms. By correlating on a topographic support the literary sources with the archaeological evidence, supplementary arguments for the abovementioned virtual restoration were added. Section B4 treats an issue rarely addressed in the archaeological and historical literature, the Ottoman fortification, as Dobrogianu’s book is quite generous with indications in this matter, still waiting to be verified by researchers. In the last part of the paper I centralized information of archaeological interest which can or could be, theoretically, precisely located in space, regarding segments of the Late Roman fortification (section C1), “old” and massive constructions seen in the basements of various public and private buildings (C2, C3), structures of the antique and medieval port (C4) and some of the dozens of tumuli along the roads which were still standing in or around the city during the early modern period (C5).Overall, this paper is an example of isolated urban history information reevaluated by correlating them with other sources (especially archaeological and cartographic), to the purpose of better understanding the urban structures’ evolution in time. At last, in addition to the results of associating different information types and sources earned through this study, perhaps the most important aspect to be underlined is the importance of the approach itself, which is the critical evaluation of a source apparently dated and generally ignored for various prejudices. As it hopefully comes out of this paper, the literature outside the scientific spheres can be itself a valuable source of information, yet insufficiently explored and exploited. Undoubtedly, in some of these cases we may speak about proper sources of the Modern Era, of a real archaeological interest, which need to be understood and treated as such. Extending this research direction in the study of historical Constanța, as well as the systematic reevaluation of the premodern literary sources, paralleled by the centralization of the relevant archaeological and cartographic sources, may yield, in time, significant evidence for the general fate of the city after the Antiquity, but also, in particular, the fate of its antique and medieval structures.Keywords: Constanța, urban history, oral history, literary sources, archaeology, Roman city, Ottoman city, Modern city, built structures, mapping

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