Contributors
Aviation Museum (Bucharest)
Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum (Bucharest)
Teleorman County Museum (Alexandria)
Boian Plain Museum (Drăgănești-Olt)
Ostrovit S.A.
Caro Hotel
Aerial Archaeology. In Romania and in Europe
Social Events
Wednesday
15 September 14:00, Guided tour of the open-air National Village Museum
15 September 20:00, Welcome drink and visit, Aviation Museum
Friday
17 September 20:00, Conference Dinner, CARO Hotel
Saturday
18 September 08:00 - 20:00, Conference trip: Neolithic tell sites in Southern Romania
(You can sleep in the bus between the stops, sorry!)
Route: Bucharest – Alexandria – Drăgănești-Olt - Bucharest
The trip will follow the route: Bucharest to Alexandria (87 km, 1.5 hours) to the archaeological sites of Vitănești (7 km), Măgura (5 km) and Țigănești-Gorganu (3 km).
More about the Gumelnița Culture and the sites in the area see on the CIMEC website: http://www.cimec.ro/Arheologie/gumelnita/gumelnita_engl/cd/default.htm
In Alexandria City we plan to stop for half an hour at the Teleorman County Museum, get a coffee and see a small but interesting travelling exhibition about the other great Neolithic culture from Eastern Romania, Cucuteni. That will be before or between the visits to the archaeological sites which are spread a few km around the city.
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Lunch at the Lucky Inn (Hanul cu noroc) in Alexandria will be one hour (starting around 2 PM).
Depending on weather and time, we can skip over one of the sites – but it would be a pity because they are very different from one another and we selected them from more than 40 tells settlements in the area. The tells are a few hundred metres walk from the road (where the buses stop) and you will have the opportunity to see them in the landscape along the Teleorman and Vedea river valleys. The present rural landscape will give you the impression of a travel back in time. There are excavations at Vitănești. At Magura there is a 19 th century Orthodox cemetery on top of the tell. At the impressive Gorganu tell from Țigănești (also named Magura Calomfirescu), excavated in the 19th century by Dimitrie Butculescu (read more about Butculescu and see some drawings from our digital archive at http://www.cimec.ro/Arheologie/Digitalarchives/3D.C.Butculescu/Butculescu.htm ) we will get by crossing the river on a suspended bridge.
Take field shoes, a cap for sunny weather and, in any case, an umbrella or light rain coat.
After lunch we go to Drăgănești-Olt (73 km, 1 hour) to visit the Museum of the Boian Plain and its open-air Archeo-Park with the reconstruction of a Neolithic tell settlement.
In Drăgănești-Olt, a small town close to the Olt River, the director of the local museum, Traian Zorzoliu, will show us the open-air Archeo-Park with a Neolithic village reconstruction and other interesting buildings among which a manor and traditional Romanian houses from the area (one sunken). He will treat us with a cup of local wine in the museum garden. You will have time to think if there is a touristic potential in that area and how tourism can help local development of a rather poor area.
We will show you a plain area which is not entirely flat, with many rivers and river terraces, modest villages, cultivated fields, charts and horses, donkeys and sheep, cows and ducks, tumuli and archaeological sites, a corner of Europe far from the tourist routes but therefore even more surprising and interesting. We will also pass through a modern gipsy village, Buzescu, with the famous Disney Land-style gipsy palaces.
Last but not least, we took aerial photos of this area in the last years, including spring 2010 so you we will complete your view on the ground with the views form above.
We arrive back in Bucharest around 8:00 PM.