Abstract

The Roman stone monuments from the northern part of the Moesia inferior are the main ancient source for the 1st-3rd century AD, a period difficult to approach archaeologically due to the overlapping of later settlements and to the state of research. Within a dedicated multidisciplinary approach, the sometimes disparate and overseen information on the provenance and finding context will be managed in a database with a GIS-environment.  The holistic documentation and analysis of sculptures, reliefs and inscriptions, as well as significant architectural decorative elements will be correlated to this database. Thus, some possible settlement nuclei will be localized and further investigated, with a view to understanding the possible differentiated ancient preferences within the military/civilian centres and/or their countryside, and/or for specific uses (like funerary monuments, votive etc ). The systematic stone provenance investigations and the multidisciplinary evaluation of results will enable a chronological, geographical and functional (building material, sculpture) differentiation for the use of the locally available stone materials in the North Dobruja. The gained or just recovered new insights into the archaeological context and associated finds, the material, the making and the (re)use of the individual monuments will enable, in the analytical part of the project, studies on the population, cultural history, settlement archaeology and economics in the region.