Forging the trowel, hammering the Dacians: Marxism and Late Iron Age Archaeology in Romania (1948–1989)

The aim of this paper is to make a critical evaluation of the Romanian historiography from 1948–1989 which had as a subject of study the social history of the northern Balkan communities in the Late Iron Age period. The two years that I have chosen have both a symbolical and a chronological value. The year 1948 marks the beginning of an extensive and radical process of political, economic, social, and cultural changes, while the year 1989 symbolizes the fall of the Romanian “communist” regime. I propose a contextual analysis, which takes into account the evolution of the “communist” regime, as well as some key events that shaped the discourse. Through this evaluation, I want to intervene in the symbolic struggles that had as a final stake the Late Iron Age archaeology from Romania. Without claiming an objective analysis, I want to offer an alternative to the distorted portrayals which had existed so far. Although labelled as a “Communist” or “Marxist” historiography, it never strayed too far from the nationalist ideology, creating massive distortions along its way. In almost 50 years, the Romanian Late Iron Age historiography has gone from a formal and superficial application of Marxist theories, to a relative liberalization, and finally returned to an almost right‑wing discourse over the Dacian past. Moreover, I will show, in contrast to the classical post‑Communist view that the Late Iron Age archaeology in Romania was in touch, at least at some point, to the contemporary historiographical debates.