Getting to grips with Dacia

Dacia is one of those provinces. Large, rich, strategically important, but somehow not quite the centre of attention of the English-speaking research. This may have to do with the fact that a lot of the excavation reports are written in Rumanian, there certainly is little reason to avoid its rather impressive archaeology.
In the last twenty years several introductory books have been published on the archaeology of Dacia, and this one by Rumanian doyen archaeologist Prof. Nicolae Gudea and German archaeologist Thomas Lobüscher is one of the most accessible ones (if you read German).

It is lavishly illustrated, as most volumes of Zaberns Bildbänder zur Archäologie are, but at the same time, the text presents short overviews to the various aspects of Dacian archaeology, starting with the  Iron Age culture of the Dacia in the three centuries preceding the Roman conquest.

The main part of the book is dedicated to the province and touching on all the major aspects, such as the Roman coloniae and municipia, the evidence for rural sites and a considerable part of the book deals with the production of the province such as the mining in Alburnus Major and elsewhere, but also the widespread pottery production.

The final chapters of the book deal with the character of the Roman province. How Roman was it? What happened to the Dacian population and what archaeological evidence do we have for them?
The authors stress the varied character of the Roman culture, little of it seems to be derived from Dacian predecessors, the authors in-fact choose to the downplay the possible Iron Age roots of the Liber/Libera and Silvanus cults stressed by other researchers. But they do point to the fact that the Roman culture on display reflects a widely varying background of Roman settlers, who must have come from Italy and the Rhine provinces, as well as the Balkans and the Greek speaking provinces further East.

What happened in the third century? Historical sources speak of frequent invasions especially from the plains in the East and of loss of territory, and the eventual evacuation. The authors stress the very different character of the Archaeological evidence, which proves a continued Roman presence in Transylvania, if somewhat detached from the Roman culture further south, as well as the presence of an emerging Iron Age/Early medieval cultures of the Daco-Getians and Sintana de Mures culture.

This book is too short to review the many changing views in Dacian archaeology, or the substantial regional differences, for that the reader should consult the lengthy bibliography and other books on the topic. But as a beginner's book into the topic, this has much to recommend it.

Bibliography:

Nicolae Gudea, Thomas Lobüscher (2006), Dacia. Eine römische Provinz zwischen Karpaten und Schwarzem Meer. Zaberns Bildbände zur Archäologie. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. 

(This review was originally intended for the Hadrianic Bulletin 2009)