the Bârlad Basin

Some Noua settlements without ash-mounds from the Eastern part of Romania (with emphasis on the region of the Bârlad basin)

The aim of this paper is to draw the attention to some Noua settlements for which no ash-mounds were revealed during the excavations. Though, I focus in the first place on the Basin of the Bârlad River, I will also look for parallels in the Eastern part of Romania. A small number of excavations were performed in Late Bronze Age settlements from the Bârlad Basin; in three cases, the small scale soundings revealed levels without ash-mounds. The comparison between layers with and without ash-mounds allowed some preliminary observations to be made, though further reinforcement is needed. I intend to present those particular cases and to bring into discussion some of the remarks the researchers made. Also, an objective of this approach is to establish a starting point of a discussion about Noua settlements without ash-mounds.

Coping with the landscape: subsistence strategies of Late Bronze Age communities within the Bârlad basin, Eastern Romania

The article is a sequence of a wider research concerning Late Bronze Age habitat in the basin of the Bârlad river (Eastern part of Romania). Though there are known few similar papers, the novelty of this one is given by the detailed analysis, whose main result is obtaining a wider perspective on a less studied region. The starting point is the database that recorded the Noua culture’s sites from the specified region. From the purpuses of this article, I emphasise the identification of strategies used by Late Bronze Age communities to adapt to the peculiarities of the studied region.