Summary
In recent years, infrastructure development in Romania (transport but also housing construction) have become more and more important, triggering extensive preventive/rescue excavations and surveys. One of the surprises during the rescue excavation at Palazu Mare Malu Alb site (Constanța county) in 2021 was the discovery in several archaeological complexes (a dwelling and several pits) of an extremely rich archaeological material, including pottery, fauna, flora and human remains, bone and stone tools, etc. The pottery material and their figurines, unprecedented for the Dobrudja area, the few 14C dates, ranging from 5700 – 5300 calBC, allow the outline of a new cultural picture, prior to the Hamangia culture, with the best analogies in the Late Early Neolithic (6000 – 5500 B.C.) and Early Middle Neolithic (5500 – 5000 B.C.) of the Balkan area. Such discoveries are unique, and their research in a project with an inter- and multidisciplinary approach is more than necessary.
The main motivation of this project is to reconstruct the life of the first human communities that arrived on the territory of Dobrudja in the Neolithic period, to define the culture of the oldest Neolithic period in Dobrudja, to create a complex and complete cultural picture, which is only possible through multidisciplinary and, especially, interdisciplinary research of the archaeological material (pottery, fauna, flora, human bones, stone and bone tools, etc.) discovered in the Palazu Mare Malul Alb site.