# Archaeology in Romania: what 406 dates reveal about Gumelnița

Choose a year and a site: explore the radiocarbon probability curve for Romania’s Gumelnița culture, then browse archaeology and material-heritage projects.

https://mariuscomper.uk/en/archaeology/

- [Dobrovăț Monastery: how old are the church, wall and tower?](https://mariuscomper.uk/dobrovat-1504/en/): The church of 1503–1504, the 17th-century wall and the tower raised in 1743: three ages in a single courtyard, then a relief model showing what could be seen from the roads around. In Romanian and English.
- [Sărata-Monteoru and the Monteoru culture: eight Bronze Age phases, read on the plan](https://mariuscomper.uk/monteoru-sarata/en/): A village in Buzău gave its name to a Bronze Age culture. Eight phases read on the profile of Cetățuia hill, a cemetery of 146 graves and a map of the sites. In Romanian and English.
- [Old Orșova under the Cerna Gulf: 24 metres of water, 5 to 6 metres of mud](https://mariuscomper.uk/orsova-de-sub-lac/en/): Orșova, a town in southwestern Romania, stood at the Cerna’s mouth. A 2017 survey measured the Cerna Gulf to 24 metres deep; a study reports 5 to 6 metres of sediment over the old town site. These are different measurements. In Romanian and English.
- [Abu Simbel: the temples that moved](https://mariuscomper.uk/abu-simbel/en/): In the 1960s, two temples carved into a cliff were cut apart and rebuilt above the rising waters of Lake Nasser. The hill behind them was built too. In Romanian and English.
- [Fishers and farmers at the Iron Gates: who grew up elsewhere?](https://mariuscomper.uk/pescari-si-agricultori/en/): As farming began, teeth indicate more people raised in a different geological area. Nine sites on the gorge’s relief map, with sample phases, DNA, diet and precise sources.
- [Popești, Giurgiu: was Burebista’s capital here?](https://mariuscomper.uk/argedava-burebista/en/): An inscription from Balchik names Argedava, and the dig at Popești uncovered a Getic fortress. One sheet sets them face to face, with the rival candidacy, Vărădia; the verdict is the reader’s. In Romanian and English.
- [Noviodunum and Dinogetia: what could sentries have seen?](https://mariuscomper.uk/noviodunum-isaccea/en/): Two Roman forts 30.1 km apart on the Danube. Choose a point on the wall and see what the visibility model indicates over today’s terrain; the assumptions are written on the page. In Romanian and English.
- [Neamț Monastery: what did the monks copy — ten dated books in 143 years?](https://mariuscomper.uk/manastirea-neamt/en/): Ten dated copies made at Neamț between 1436 and 1579, then Paisie’s school: what was copied and when, each book with its year and its proof.
- [Your Town and the Limes](https://mariuscomper.uk/limes-orasul-tau/en/): Around the year 210, a line stitched from forts, towers and a timber palisade cut present-day Romania in two. Type your town below and find which side you were on — inside, outside, or right on the frontier.
- [Enisala Fortress: what the sentries saw from the walls, above the Razim lagoon](https://mariuscomper.uk/enisala/en/): The walls rise some 99 metres above the lagoon, in Romania's Dobrogea. From them, the watch saw the lagoon water for 25 kilometres and, south-eastward, the open sea past the spit — though the fortress never stood on the seashore.
- [The Bronze Age collapse, place by place: 153 claimed destructions of about 1200 BCE, each with the clock that dated it](https://mariuscomper.uk/bronze-age-collapse/): 153 destructions are said to have happened at the end of the Bronze Age. Jesse Millek (2023) went back to the excavation reports and keeps 59. A relief map of the eastern Mediterranean shows all of them on a clock from 1300 to 1050 BCE and what dated each: pottery, a text, tree rings or radiocarbon. Only seven have a radiocarbon range for the destruction itself, 84 to 245 years wide; the page shows what they can and cannot say.
- [Oradea Fortress: the walled star that spent 32 years as a pashalik capital](https://mariuscomper.uk/oradea-cetatea/en/): Five bastions on a 1,614-metre circuit, raised between 1570 and 1660 from a plan whose author appears in no document; 44 days of siege in the summer of 1660; then 32 years as the seat of the Pashalik of Varat, an Ottoman province. The star at true scale, over any town — then the building, stone by stone.
- [Constantine the Great's bridge at Sucidava: 2,437 metres across the Danube, from AD 328](https://mariuscomper.uk/sucidava-328/en/): Choose a pace and walk its whole length — 2,437 metres, a mile and a half — on a to-scale drawing, while Trajan's bridge, drawn underneath, ends at less than half.
- [Europe’s three ancestral peoples: who they were, when they came, how much of each remains](https://mariuscomper.uk/stramosii-europei/en/): Hunter-gatherers who were here after the Ice Age. Farmers who arrived from Anatolia about 8,500 years ago. Herders who came off the steppe about 5,000 years ago. Most people with European ancestors descend from all three. Each has its own colour on this map, shown where and when a skeleton’s DNA has been read: 12,346 people so far. With a lookup for your own father line or mother line.
- [Could the Dacian fortresses of the Orăștie Mountains see each other? Computed on the real relief](https://mariuscomper.uk/cetati-care-se-vad/en/): Of 15 pairs, one: Costești-Cetățuie and Blidaru, neighbours 1.6 km apart. In the other 14 the mountain rises at least 100 m above the straight line. From the capital, Sarmizegetusa Regia, none of the other five fortresses can be seen, even from a 12 m tower. A chain of posts in between remains possible; the positions known do not show one.
- [Do all roads lead to Rome? The proverb, tested on 299,171 km of Roman roads](https://mariuscomper.uk/roads-to-rome/): On Itiner-e, the 2025 map of Roman roads, 57% of the length can be walked to Rome, 37% hangs on two short ferries and 5.9% is on islands. But the same 94% lead to Byzantium too: roads run both ways, and the average kilometre of road is nearer to Byzantium (2,395 km) than to Rome (2,781 km). The distances the Romans wrote on the Peutinger map are compared with the measured roads, and for any town between Scotland and the Nile the map shows its road to Rome.
- [Where people lived when ice covered Europe](https://mariuscomper.uk/europa-sub-gheata/en/): Each light is a Stone Age archaeological site with a radiocarbon date from that time. The ice, the coasts and the lights change as you scroll, from 27,000 years ago to 8,000. Search for your town to see what stood there 21,000 years ago.
- [Doggerland map: the land under the North Sea, drowned between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago](https://mariuscomper.uk/drowned-doggerland/): Doggerland joined Britain to Denmark and the Netherlands until the sea drowned it. A relief map of today’s sea floor, with 1,873 river channels, lakes and other features mapped beneath it, and the computed shore of any moment since 16,000 years ago. For each North Sea town, it shows how far away the shore was 10,500 years ago.
- [Notre-Dame de Paris: fire, restoration and contested windows](https://mariuscomper.uk/notre-dame-din-paris-2019/en/): 15 April 2019, 18:20: three distinct alarms, the spire down around 19:50, out by 09:50. Then the oaks, the organ's 115 stops, the December 2024 reopening and the 2026 dispute over six intact 1864 windows. In Romanian, English and French.
- [Rotterdam after the bombing: a city between ruins and a new plan](https://mariuscomper.uk/rotterdam-dupa-bombardament/en/): 14 May 1940: 713 named civilian victims, plus 32 separately suspected cases, and the fire line drawn in the street. Then the Lijnbaan, the first car-free shopping centre in the Netherlands, and the reconstruction plan that redrew the centre. In Romanian and English.
- [Chicago after the 1871 fire: from ruins to the 1893 fair](https://mariuscomper.uk/incendiul-din-chicago/en/): Three days of fire from the O'Leary barn: about 200 dead, 17,000 buildings, 100,000 homeless. Then the 1872 ordinance, the Palmer House, the first skyscraper and the 1893 fair. In Romanian and English.
- [Lisbon after the 1755 earthquake: uneven damage, plans and urban memory](https://mariuscomper.uk/lisabona-dupa-cutremur/en/): The earthquake, tsunami and fire affected Lisbon in different ways. Five stops follow what local studies show, what rebuilding plans proposed — from Baixa's adapted grid to the Carmo memorial ruins — and how the rebuilt city changed.
- [Dresden's Frauenkirche: the church, the ruin and a contested rebuilding](https://mariuscomper.uk/frauenkirche-din-dresda/en/): Dresden's Frauenkirche became a ruin, a memorial and then a rebuilt church. The chronology of its dated images and decisions — from the morning of 15 February 1945 to the reused stone of 1994 — shows how the meaning of the site changed.
- [Warsaw’s Old Town: from Canaletto’s view to the past the city chose](https://mariuscomper.uk/varsovia-din-ruine/en/): The student drawings smuggled out before the fire, the 1945 damage maps, Canaletto’s views and the choice of which period to return to: how Warsaw’s Old Town was rebuilt, told by scrolling through each era’s records.
- [The palace that came back: one plot, three buildings](https://mariuscomper.uk/palatul-care-s-a-intors/en/): A demolished Prussian palace, a GDR palace built and demolished, and Baroque façades returning around a new museum. Five documented moments — c. 1900, 1950, 1976, 2006–08, 2020–21 — trace the buildings on one Berlin plot, with a context plan, the Persius drawing and conflict panels where sources disagree.
- [Beijing's walls, along the metro route](https://mariuscomper.uk/zidurile-beijingului/en/): Beijing's Line 2 follows the former inner-city enclosure corridor, and several stations carry the old gates' names. Ride all 18 stops — 8 inner-gate names, 3 later openings, 7 without a counterpart — then compare Liang Sicheng's unbuilt wall-top park with the 1952–1970 demolitions and count what remains: 2 gate sites, 3 towers, wall fragments.
- [Izmail Fortress: what remains beside the Danube](https://mariuscomper.uk/cetatea-ismail/en/): At Izmail on the Danube, military plans show an old fortress, a new one and a river front. Suvorov's assault of 11/22 December 1790 did not end the site's history: the defences were rebuilt, then dismantled after the 1856 peace. Set the plans beside today's traces: the mosque with its diorama and the park-museum.
- [Văcărești Monastery, on the same map](https://mariuscomper.uk/manastirea-vacaresti/en/): A princely foundation becomes a prison, then a demolition site: the great church falls in December 1986, the last remains in January 1987. What stays is the abandoned basin and the wetland now protected as a nature park. Slide the monastery plan over the map through 1723/24, 1865, 1984, 1989 and 2016.
- [The oldest dated hand: an outline on a cave wall, at least 67,800 years old](https://mariuscomper.uk/cea-mai-veche-mana/en/): Blow pigment across a wall and lay your palm over the 14 by 10 centimetre patch left by a hand stencil on Muna island, Indonesia, at least 67,800 years old. See how a cave painting is dated, what is known about who made these hands and why so many hands at Gargas lack fingers.
- [The town under the hill](https://mariuscomper.uk/salina-turda/en/): 112 metres under the hill at Turda floats a lake with boats, beneath a 90-metre salt bell cut between 1690 and 1880. Descend chamber by chamber — the 917-metre gallery, the Staircase of the Rich, the 1881 horse-whim, the echo chamber — in a schematic 3D cross-section, and learn why the 1075 document is a toll, not a mine.
- [Why are Wallachia's oldest monasteries where they are?](https://mariuscomper.uk/manastirile-tarii-romanesti/en/): Drop three marks on the relief, then the charters place the monasteries attested by 1500, in documentary order. Test five explanations one by one: the passes, the Danube, the prince, Nicodim's network, the forest. In Romanian and English.
- [There is an Iron Age fort under this wood](https://mariuscomper.uk/bryn-mawr/en/): A wooded hill in Powys hides an Iron Age hillfort. Slide from the tree tops to the laser-measured ground: the rampart, ditch, gateway and hollows found in two surveys.
- [The Hills Made of Houses: more than a thousand years of Gumelnița, from 406 radiocarbon dates](https://mariuscomper.uk/gumelnita/en/): Between 4900 and 3800 BC on the Lower Danube, people built their houses one on top of another until their villages became mounds. A clock drawn from 406 radiocarbon dates, the gold of Varna, four people raised elsewhere and what has actually been found under Bucharest, in Romanian and English.
- [Oase 1: a Neanderthal ancestor 4–6 generations back](https://mariuscomper.uk/pestera-cu-oase/en/): The remains of a man from about 40,000 years ago, found near Anina: 6–9% Neanderthal DNA from an ancestor 4–6 generations back. The Oase 1 genome, published in 2015.
- [Vikings were felling trees in America in 1021. How can anyone know the exact year?](https://mariuscomper.uk/vikingii-in-america/en/): The Greenlanders' saga and Erik the Red's saga tell the same story, contradict each other, and give no year. A dig at the northern tip of Newfoundland shows that Norse people camped there, but does not tell us what they called it. A measurement published in 2021, on three worked pieces of wood from that camp, gives the year: the trees were cut in 1021.
- [Romania has 11 UNESCO sites. The map shows 323 places.](https://mariuscomper.uk/harta-unesco/en/): A map of Romania's UNESCO World Heritage brings together all 11 sites and their 323 places, with inscription year, criteria, area and conservation status.
- [Six UNESCO Dacian fortresses, one ticket office. The other five you reach on foot.](https://mariuscomper.uk/cetati-dacice/en/): A map of the six Dacian fortresses in the Orăștie Mountains shows road and walking access, elevation gain, time needed, opening hours, tickets and each site's condition.
- [Everyone goes to Viscri and Biertan. There are 160 more fortified churches, and at most of them you phone for the key.](https://mariuscomper.uk/biserici-fortificate/en/): A map of Transylvania's 162 fortified churches includes the seven UNESCO villages, heritage class, published opening hours, keyholder contact and damaged buildings.
- [UNESCO counted 277 points along Rome's Dacian frontier. Only a few can be visited, with a ticket.](https://mariuscomper.uk/frontiera-dacica/en/): A map of Roman archaeological sites open to the public in Romania, including Porolissum, Drobeta and Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa, with opening hours, tickets and sources.
- [Wooden churches belong to the hills](https://mariuscomper.uk/biserici-de-lemn/en/): The Carpathians are usually treated as the border between two building worlds. Wooden churches ignore it: their density rises the same way on both flanks and falls where the hills end.
- [Romania's oldest monasteries are not where you would look for them](https://mariuscomper.uk/cele-mai-vechi-manastiri/en/): Seven of the eight monastic sites older than the year 1200 are in the Banat, Crișana and Transylvania. The eighth is in Dobruja. In Moldavia and Wallachia there is not one.
- [The oldest ruins in Romania](https://mariuscomper.uk/cele-mai-vechi-ruine/en/): The oldest ruins in the country are neither Dacian nor Roman: they are Neolithic and Bronze Age fortified settlements. And the most heavily re-settled place in the list is a hill in Buzău county, with five villages and five cemeteries stacked on it.
- [Hadrian's Wall, mile by mile: what survives and where to stop](https://mariuscomper.uk/hadrians-wall/en/): An end-to-end guide to Hadrian's Wall with its measured elevation profile, forts, milecastles, turrets and car-free connections, together with the limits of the available data.
- [Painted Monasteries of Bucovina: 1–2 Day Route, Measured Distances](https://mariuscomper.uk/manastiri-pictate/en/): Voronet, Humor, Moldovita, Sucevita, Arbore: what to see at each, published hours, service times to avoid, and the optimal route with measured driving distances from Gura Humorului or Suceava.
- [Discoveries near you — Beneath your feet](https://mariuscomper.uk/sub-picioarele-tale/en/): Choose a Romanian town or village to find archaeological discoveries recorded within 1, 5 and 10 km of its reference point. Explore their periods and open the evidence in Romania’s National Archaeological Record.
- [Who were the Greeks who lived in Romania for a thousand years? c. 630 BC – 1914](https://mariuscomper.uk/histria/en/): Miletus, the silver drachma, the AD 100 boundary. Four chapters and a map that silts as you read.
- [Sarmizegetusa Regia: sunrise from the Dacian sanctuaries and the “Dacian calendar”, tested on the real terrain](https://mariuscomper.uk/sarmizegetusa-mituri/en/): From the centre of the andesite sun, the Sun rises 42–56 minutes after the flat-horizon time and well to the south: the mountain holds the light back. Enter your birthday and see whether any “sacred” line catches it.
- [Tabula Traiana in the Danube Gorge: what it says and how it was lifted 20 metres in 1969](https://mariuscomper.uk/tabula-traiana/en/): Trajan's inscription of AD 100, word by word, and the 260-tonne block lifted 20 metres in 1969 before the Iron Gates lake.
- [The only Roman map of Banat strings eleven stations in a row. Not one still goes by its name.](https://mariuscomper.uk/peutingeriana-dacia/en/): The Tabula Peutingeriana, the 1265 copy of the Empire's road map, preserves the only ancient road network of Dacia. Eleven names from the Danube to Sarmizegetusa, taken one by one: none survived untouched.
- [The legion's stamp from Apulum: three marks in clay, one word that came straight into Romanian](https://mariuscomper.uk/tigla-de-la-apulum/en/): A fragment of Roman ceramic in the Alba Iulia museum carries the stamp LEG XIII GEM. Of its three marks only one reached Romanian by the direct road; the map follows the legion from the Rubicon to Apulum.
- [Tricule Fortress at Svinița, Romania: ice cut the third tower down in 1924, the Iron Gates lake only covered what was left](https://mariuscomper.uk/turnul-din-dunare/en/): Tricule Fortress at Svinița, Romania: three medieval towers in the Danube, one cut down by ice in 1924 from about 12 metres to 3, then covered by the Iron Gates lake. Map, true-scale plan and a profile of tower 3.
- [I, Zenovius, set up this gift](https://mariuscomper.uk/donariul-din-biertan/en/): The Biertan donarium: a 4th-century bronze tablet found in 1775 near Biertan, Romania, inscribed EGO ZENOVIVS VOTVM POSVI. Four Latin words, two of which still live in Romanian.
- [He has been thinking for 7,000 years. We still don't know what about.](https://mariuscomper.uk/ganditorul-hamangia/en/): The Thinker of Hamangia and the Sitting Woman: two fired-clay figurines, seven millennia old, found in a grave at Cernavodă. What we know, what we guess, and what we will never know about them.
- [The chalk-cut churches of Basarabi–Murfatlar, in 3D](https://mariuscomper.uk/basarabi-murfatlar/en/): The Basarabi–Murfatlar cave complex in Romania, in its 3D laser scan: slice the chalk block level by level and find three churches carved one beneath another a thousand years ago, their walls full of runes nobody has deciphered.
- [6 February AD 131: what we can still read after 1,895 years](https://mariuscomper.uk/actul-din-131/en/): Five surviving lines, a Roman date and the name Alburnus Maior: what the wax tablet written on 6 February 131 really tells us.
- [Cucuteni–Trypillia: Two Millennia Under One Name](https://cucuteni.mariuscomper.uk/en/): How settlements, houses, food, pottery and rituals changed between c. 5050 and 2950 BCE.
- [Salt Trails](https://salt.mariuscomper.uk/en/): An edible rock set humans in motion.
- [A 6,500-year-old village is falling into a lake, piece by piece](https://mariuscomper.uk/sultana-malu-rosu/en/): Before it collapsed, a Copper Age village mound was at least 130 metres long; in 2019 it was under 34. On the laser-measured ground: what survives, what was dug, what the lake has taken.
- [The fortress with seven corners](https://mariuscomper.uk/cetatea-alba-iulia/en/): From a plane, Alba Iulia is a seven-pointed star: 7 named bastions, 6 gates, 12 kilometres of walls over the Roman camp and the medieval fortress. Build the star bastion by bastion, in schematic 3D, and learn why the straight wall died, who counted 20,000 labourers with no ledger, and why Gate VII is no gate.
- [The castle with three lives](https://mariuscomper.uk/castelul-bran/en/): On the rock between Măgura and Dealul Cetății, Bran was walled after the privilege of 19 November 1377, became Queen Marie’s favourite home on 1 December 1920, and wears the Dracula castle label — though Vlad the Impaler never held it. Build the fortress phase by phase, in schematic 3D, then peel the myth off the walls.
- [Where was Vlad, really?](https://mariuscomper.uk/cetatea-poenari/en/): Bran said: not here. At the end of 1,480 concrete steps, on Mount Cetățuia at 850 metres, stands the fortress tradition and archaeology attribute to Vlad the Impaler: a 14th-century tower, a 15th-century building. Climb the steps in 3D, then grade the legends.
- [The castle that painted its legend](https://mariuscomper.uk/castelul-corvin/en/): Bran said: not here. Poenari said: up, on the steps. Hunedoara says it differently: here the legends live inside the court — the raven with the ring, the fountain with the curse, the cellar with the prisoner. The 1409 gift, Iancu's building after 1440, the 1854 blaze: raise it tower by tower, in 3D, then grade the legends.
- [The wall that judges](https://mariuscomper.uk/manastirea-voronet/en/): Argeș said: stone and verse. Hunedoara said: stone and story. Voroneț says it differently: the stone tells its days — 26 May, 14 September 1488 — and the wall shows the end: the 1547 Judgment, with zodiac and peoples. Climb it register by register, in 3D, then grade the legends: Daniil, the lost secret, the airplane.
- [The castle that lit up](https://mariuscomper.uk/castelul-peles/en/): Bran said: fortress stone. Hunedoara said: stone and story. Peleș says it differently: the stone tells its architects — Doderer refused, Schultz, Liman — and the light tells its years: 1884 the network, 1897 the station. Climb it phase by phase, in 3D, then grade the legends: the first in Europe, the fungus, Ceaușescu's night, the film interiors.
- [The shell on the cliff](https://mariuscomper.uk/cazinoul-constanta/en/): Bran said: fortress stone. Peles said: stone and light. The Casino says it differently: the stone tells its architects — three sets of drawings, Renard–Antonescu–Renard — and the walls tell their people: a note from 31 December 1951, found in 2020. Climb it storm by storm, in 3D, then grade the legends: Antonescu, Mincu, "the first", the ghosts.
- [Trajan's Trophy](https://mariuscomper.uk/adamclisi/en/): The Bridge said: Apollodorus across the Danube. The Column said: the wars in a spiral. The Trophy says it differently: the stone tells its years — 109 in the dedication, 1977 in the frame — and the walls tell their people: some 3,800 names on an after-the-battle altar. Climb it stone by stone, in 3D, then grade the legends: Apollodorus, Dio, the commander, the concrete.
- [Two Sarmizegetusas](https://mariuscomper.uk/ulpia-traiana/en/): The Sarmizegetusa in the mountains is Dacian. But 40 km west, in the plain, the Romans walled a new city — and gave it the same name. The one in the plain is called Rome: the 108–110 founding, the marble forum, the arena turned fortress with tombstone-blocked gates — in 3D, legends graded.
- [Money under the ground: Roman coin finds in Romania](https://mariuscomper.uk/monede-romane/en/): 583 Oxford records on one map: hoards, possible hoards and individual coins. The chronology dates the latest coin; each point keeps its ratings and bibliography, while conflicting dates remain visible.

## Sources

- [Popescu et al., “The Rise and Fall of the Gumelnița–Kodžadermen–Karanovo VI Culture”, Radiocarbon (2023)](https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2023.6)
- [Zenodo · supplementary radiocarbon dataset, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.5701137](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5701137)
- [Registrul Arheologic Național · Gumelnița, cod 100629.01](https://ran.cimec.ro/sel.asp?descript=gumelnita-oras-oltenita-calarasi-situl-arheologic-de-la-gumelnita-cod-sit-ran-100629.01)