The Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (ICUB), in collaboration with Teleorman County Museum, is pleased to announce the 29th ArchaeoSciences Seminar.
These seminars are an original initiative of our platform that aims to provide a setting for professionals in the Archaeological Sciences field from different parts of the world to share knowledge and transmit meaningful information about the latest issues regarding the current methods and approaches used to study the past. It is also a chance for Romanian students to learn more about the various interdisciplinary aspects of archaeology.
This seminar will take place on 2 March 2023 at 12:00 am (EET), and our guest speaker is Dr. Stev Millls from Cardiff University (UK).
He will give a lecture entitled “Early to mid-Holocene human-river interactions in the lower Danube: recent research at Poiana, Teleorman County”.
Dr Steve Mills is a Senior Lecturer in Archaeology in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University. With research interests in landscape archaeology, the European Neolithic, GIS and archaeological survey, he has participated in field research in Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Romania, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. Between 2001 and 2003 he was a member of the landscape characterisation and mapping team supporting the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site Bid, UK (inscribed 2006). He has a long-standing collaboration with colleagues at the Muzeul Judeţean Teleorman, Alexandria. From 1998-2005 he was a member of the Southern Romania Archaeological Project investigating prehistoric land use in the Teleorman River valley. As a principal investigator, he contributed to the Măgura Past and Present Project (2008-2011) exploring relationships between art and archaeology to promote local heritage in a Romanian village and at the museum. Other project contributions include the Catacombs of Anubis project investigating the dog catacombs at Saqqara, Egypt, and the Lyonesse project studying the impact of sea level change in the Isles of Scilly, UK. His current projects include Views of an Antique Land collecting and making accessible images of Egypt and Palestine from the period of the First World War, and Human-river interactions in the lower Danube that examines the environmental context surrounding the emergence of the Neolithic in an alluvial basin of the Danube in Teleorman County.
The current lecture is the result of joint collaboration between our guest speaker and Professor Mark Macklin (School of Geography, University of Lincoln, UK), Dr. Amelia Pannett (Independent lithic specialist, UK), and Dr. Pavel Mirea (Teleorman County Museum, Romania).
Our understanding of the environmental context surrounding prehistoric (c. 9000-5000 cal. BC) human–river interactions in the lower Danube is being transformed by recent geoarchaeological research. This presentation summarises the late Pleistocene and Holocene fluvial chronology from the Teleorman Valley and then presents new research around the village of Poiana in an alluvial basin of the Danube, between Turnu Măgurele and Zimnicea.
In the last 10 years a large area of Teleorman County, including part of the Danube Valley, has been studied as part of the archaeological componen of the PUG “General Urban Plans” of communes and municipalities. This work has identified many new sites and find spots, including prehistoric flint scatters around Poiana, providing a more detailed representation of past landscape use. Important amongst the material in these flint scatters is the high proportion of cores including single platform conical and sub-conical shaped cores. Cores of this type have been found in Mesolithic and/or early Neolithic contexts elsewhere around the Black Sea region. A detailed geoarchaeological investigation, with OSL dating and lithic analyses, of these scatters in the Danube valley around Poiana will broaden our understanding of the chronological and spatial framework for prehistoric floodplain and resource use.
This event will take place Thursday, 2 March 2023, starting at 12:00 am (EET) at the Faculty of Biology, in the Conference Room of the Research Platform in Biology and Systematic Ecology (Splaiul Independenței, no. 91-95, Bucharest).
We look forward to exciting discussions!
ArchaeoScience#RO Team