COMMENTARIA ARCHAEOLOGICA ET HISTORICA (VII). 1. Again about the location of the expedition of Aelius Catus and the displacement of the northern Danubian Getae to the south of the river; 2. The “Bastarnae” and the “Celts” from Transylvania in ca. 200 BC. Comments regarding the “burial” discovered at Iernut (Mureș County)
Authors:   Institute of Archaeology and History of Art Cluj-Napoca, Rustoiu Aurel 
Published: June 2024

1. Again about the location of the expedition of Aelius Catus and the displacement of the northern Danubian Getae to the south of the river. In a polemic paragraph, Strabo (VII.3.10) mentions briefly that “in our own times Aelius Catus has removed from the opposite side of the Danube into Thrace fifty thousand Getae, who speak a language cognate with the Thracian. They still inhabit the very spot, and pass by the name of Moesi”. Strabo’s paragraph has been widely discussed in archaeological literature and many Romanian researchers have commonly located the intervention of the governor of Macedonia in the Wallachian Danube’s area (eastward the confluence of the Olt River with the Danube). Recently, I suggested that the “trans-Danubians” must have been relocated in an area from eastern Serbia and north-western Bulgaria. Vladislav Zhivkov and Zdravko Dimitrov have offered new arguments for this localization. Analysing the discoveries on the right bank of the Danube between the Timok and the Ogosta rivers, they observed that a number of new settlements and cemeteries appeared at the beginning of the 1st century AD precisely in this previously scarcely populated region. The inventories of these settlements and cemeteries have analogies northward the Danube. That is why the aforementioned Bulgarian researchers have come to the conclusion that their appearance was most likely linked to the displacement of the northern Danubian Getae to the south of the river at the beginning of the 1st century AD, under the orders of Aelius Catus. The conclusion presented by Zhivkov and Dimitrov is pertinent and well supported by archaeological evidence, confirming my earlier hypothesis regarding the area where the Roman authorities most likely resettled the northern Danubian Getae. 2. The “Bastarnae” and the “Celts” from Transylvania in ca. 200 BC. Comments regarding the “burial” discovered at Iernut (Mureş County). A recent discovery brings again into discussion the issue of the relations between the “Bastarnae” from the east of the Carpathians and the communities from Transylvania. The archaeological feature in question, probably a burial, was discovered in 2016 near Iernut (Mureş County). The feature can be dated to the end of the La Tène C1, that is before or around 200 BC. The discovery may represent a ritual, a symbolic burial of a person, probably a woman, originating from the “Bastarnae” cultural environment from the east of the Carpathians. Its presence in Transylvania could be potentially related to a matrimonial “alliance” concluded between members of the elites from the two geographic and cultural areas. It is worth underlining that the “burial” from Iernut is another example of the role played by individual and collective mobility in the circulation of goods and also of concepts, ideas, customs, knowledge etc from one cultural area to another, contributing to the long-distance inter-community exchanges.