Journal articles on the topic 'Romanian Art objects'

Abstract The “Easter Triptych” project was conducted in six annual editions (except for 2020 and 2021 – the years of the Coronavirus Pandemic). It was conceived and achieved in the name and in the spirit of the three important moments in the history of our humanity: Birth, Passion and Joy of the Resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ. This great religious cultural project was attended by important personalities of Iaşi and not only, such as lyrical artists from the Romanian National Opera Iaşi, church persons from the Metropolitan Church of Moldavia and Bukovina, university professors, ethnographers, craftsmen and students. We were joined by Radio Romania Cultural Bucharest, Radio Iasi, TV Iasi, Radio “Trinitas” and “Moldova” National Museum Complex Iasi. With this important project, I also went to Austria, Vienna, to the Romanian Cultural Center and to the Republic of Moldova, to “Alecu Russo” State University Balti. Each edition presented under its generous scope, equally traditions, customs and beliefs firmly established in our soul and conscience as Romanians. The events included moments of musical art: classical musical works (lyrical, instrumental, choral), Christmas carols, Easter songs, religious poems, book launches, exhibitions of decorated eggs from the Bukovina area, exhibitions of icons, crosses, carpets woven in monasteries, ceramic objects from Horezu, wooden sculpture objects and traditional folk costumes. In addition to these, there was a CD: “Easter Triptych”.

The medieval textiles collection of the National Museum of Art of Romania (MNAR) has been in place since 1865 and nowadays preserves about 1000 medieval and pre-modern weavings and embroideries. These extremely valuable objects, dated between the 14th and the 19th centuries, are mainly religious embroidered garments and veils with special significance in the Byzantine li-turgy. Ecclesiastical embroideries of Byzantine tradition are characterized by a complex technique: metallic threads with a silk core, metallic wires and coloured silk threads are couched over padding on layers of silk and cellulosic supports so as to create relief through light reflection. The silk sup-ports and the sewing threads are coloured, mainly in red, blue, green and yellow hues, and analytical investigations of the dyes used in embroideries preserved in the MNAR, in the Putna and Sucevița Monasteries, have been released in previous studies by the corresponding author. The present work continues the approach with research into dyes in about 25 aëres and epitaphioi from the MNAR collection. Considering their privileged function in the liturgical ritual, these luxurious pieces embroidered with silver, gilded silver or coloured silk threads and decorated with pearls, sequins or semi-precious stones are the most faithful description of the stylistic and technological evolution of the art of post-Byzantine embroidery in the Romanian provinces. The data resulting from the present research will improve the knowledge regarding this topic. Dye analysis was performed by liquid chromatography with diode array detection, while fibres were characterized by infrared spectroscopy (with attenuated total reflectance) and optical microscopy. The biological sources identified—carminic acid-based dyes, redwood, dyer’s broom, weld, indigo-based dyes––will be discussed in correspondence with their use in the embroidery technique: support, lining and embroidery threads, together with other sources previously reported on Byzantine embroideries in Romanian collections, and in similar objects preserved at Holy Mount Athos.

The purpose of the study is related to the identification and analysis of the significance and multiple values of the rhombus in the Romanian art, considering from its frequent perpetuation in the traditional art. Methodology. The study is founded by the application of direct-descriptive observation methods, exploratory methods, structural, comparative, culturological-historical, artistic, inductive and deductive analysis. The substantiation of the arguments was based on the multicriterial analysis of the bibliographic sources of reference published on this subject. Results. There were analyzed the interpretation of the subject in different bibliographical sources, analyzed the approach of the Rhombus from the oldest sources that attest its presence both as a synthesis of the form and as an ornamental element, there were analyzed the meanings attributed to the Rhombus as a representative visual identity element, there were analyzed the ways of visual representation of the Rhombus and were structured, it was observed and analyzed the presence of the Rhombus in the various pieces of interior textiles Romanian. Scientific novelty. The evaluation of the importance of the Rhombus for the intangible cultural heritage, of the frequency of finding the Rhombus in the traditional art objects, the awareness regarding the capitalization of this important element found in the traditional Romanian culture that denotes the arguments of the spiritual aspirations of identity. Practical significance. The practical importance is offered by the knowledge of the forms of representation of the Rhombus and of the meanings it denotes in one interpretation or another constituting reconnosable coded visual narratives. The paper presents the results of the study carried out within the State Program 20.8009.0807.17 REVICULT "Education for the revitalization of the national cultural heritage through the traditional processing technologies used in the Republic of Moldova, in the context of multiculturalism, diversity and European integration".

Accepted as part of the methodological structure of restoration, the reconstruction of the work of art, in its widest sense, from architecture to objects of mobile heritage, was legitimised either by the recovery of the memory of the destroyed heritage, or by the need of integrity of the image, with its many connotations. Also, the reconstruction has been assimilated, more or less abusively, with the act of fanciful reconstruction, of creative remaking or anastylosis. Stimulated today by the possibilities of endless, performant reconstitutions, by means of virtual space, reconstruction seems to get further and further away from one of the fundamental principles that governs the existence of heritage: the principle of authenticity understood as indestructible relationship between the image and the historicized matter in which it survived. This article analyses the dramatic destiny of the two monuments which were destroyed during the communist regime, the church of the Cotroceni Palace and the Văcărești monastic ensemble, in relation to the genesis of the concept of conservation-restoration of historical monuments in the Romanian space.

The traditional shirt (“ie”) is the most well-known element of Romanian anonymous textile art. Apart from aesthetic and utilitarian roles, it has strong symbolic significance, mainly through the colours used for decoration. Very recently, the traditional shirt with decoration over the shoulder (“ia cu altiță”) was introduced as a Romanian identity element as part of UNESCO heritage. Depending on the ethnographic area, the traditional shirt with decoration over the shoulder has acquired special expressive particularities over time. Particularly relevant is that from Valea Hârtibaciului, an area of Transylvania in the very centre of Romania. Although sober in appearance with large fields of white plain weave, it is discreetly decorated with elaborated embroidery on the sleeve bracelets, over the shoulders and neck. Even the colour range and decoration motifs remain unchanged in time, evolution in the materials used and a subtle transition from natural hues to more strident alternatives were observed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For the present study, samples were taken from representative objects in the collections of the ASTRA Museum, Sibiu and Ethnographical Museum, Brasov, documented as belonging to the area of Valea Hârtibaciului and dated in the museum archives as from the late 19th and early 20th century. The textile materials and the dyes used in the shirts’ embroidery were monitored. Fibre identification was made by optical microscopy and infrared spectroscopy (FTIR-ATR). Dye analysis was performed by liquid chromatography coupled with UV-Vis (diode array) detection, while some of the samples were also analysed by liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometric detection (LC-DAD-MS). Dyes were extracted from the fibres by acid hydrolysis. Identification was based on data collected on standards, dyes and dyed fibres. For the early synthetic dyes, a dedicated library of references was built, which includes information relative to the most relevant representatives used between 1850 and 1900, the ‘Helmut Schweppe list’. According to the study, in the last decades of the 19th century, natural dye sources such as dyer’s broom, madder, Mexican cochineal and indigoid dyes were gradually replaced by early synthetic dyes: fuchsine (1856), methyl violet (1861), synthetic alizarin (1871), brilliant green (1879), azo flavine 3R (1880), rhodamine B (1887) and others.

Disputes arising from the execution of administrative contracts constitute a continuous challenge to the social actors involved. The Republic of Moldova could take advantage of Romanian legislation if it started from the assumption that the theories and principles that govern administrative contracts in Romania are valid for it. In the case of Romania, the reconsideration of art. 8 para. (2) of the Administrative Litigation Law no. 554/2004 which requires a legislative intervention in order to cancel the negative consequences for the private entrepreneur, part of an administrative contract, as a result of the procedural defect of not invoking, ex officio, by the court, at the first term, of functional material competence. After such an approach, the legislature of the Republic of Moldova could also be inspired, and could improve and harmonize the provisions of the Administrative Litigation Law no. 793 of 10.02.2000 and the Administrative Code no. 116/2018. Anyway, in The Republic of Moldova, by virtue of its status as a candidate country for the EU, many legislative harmonizations will take place, and Romania’s experience would help.

Dendrochronology is a dating method which uses tree ring data of living trees and tree ring series measured on historical and archaeological wood. In optimal circumstances dendrochronology can produce absolute dating with a half-year accuracy. Due to research carried out by our team, initiated in 2003, we can use now two master chronologies to date oak and fi r structures in Transylvania for the period between the 13th and 19th centuries, a couple of absolutely dated series for the 12th to 14th centuries, and also some fl oating series for the late migration period (7th ‒ 8th centuries) and Roman period. Th e article presents a few case studies of dendrochronological research on medieval churches from this region (Darjiu, Targu Mureş, Cetatea de Baltă, Bistriţa, Sibiu). During these campaigns of fi eldwork and following analyses we successfully dated more medieval roofs and later renovation phases. So far the earliest dated roof is the structure above the Evangelic church in Sibiu, where the timber material comes from trees felled at the middle of the 14th century. Th e method is also used to date art objects (altar panels) and wood installations (painted ceilings, furniture). To extend the validity of the present chronologies, both in time and space (in Moldova and the Romanian Plain), stronger archaeological involvement will be needed.

"Natural object or element of an artwork? Case Study: Artists, Artworks and Exhibitions in Cluj, Romania. In this article, we discuss the relationship between art and natural objects such as stuffed animals, skins, bones, dried plants or minerals and their aesthetical value from their position as artworks or elements of an artwork. In Cluj, between 2017 and 2019, artworks and exhibitions which integrate this type of practices and natural history materiality flourished. We aim to compose an inventory that could contribute to the archive of local art events, artworks, and artists in order to serve further analysis of local specificity, which could eventually find relevance in the theoretic approaches of art. In conclusion, we underline some of the theoretical approaches of the dynamics of natural object’s values and of the procedures established by organizations such as museums and galleries. Keywords: art galleries, art museums, natural history museums, natural object, BioArt"

s early as the dawn of modern age, Benjamin Constant (1819) wrote that the current democracy, unlike the ancient one, based on slavery and perpetual wars, is based on capital, while Braudel (1979) shows that capitalism as a concept could not exist without the other concepts preceding it in the sequence they occur in society, i.e. capital and capitalist. Therefore, I regarded capital, meaning the foundation of both democracy and capitalism, as a particularly challenging object of study from the standpoint of its formation, development, location in the economy and ownership in post-communist Romania. I deem the amount, quality, origin and behaviour of capital are pivotal for a solid democracy and an efficient functioning of capitalist market economy in our country. The book Capital in post-communist Romania, based on long data series, may cast a historical perspective on the economic and social phenomena and processes under scrutiny. They are meant to help devise and implement public policies for making the objectively necessary corrections to the Romanian society after such an intricate transition, as well as to prepare the actions for securing Romania’s future development. I viewed this scientific endeavour as useful after identifying a shortage of information and, against this backdrop, of analysis on economic and social results of Romania’s transition, also by comparison with other former communist countries.

The text analyzes the early activity of the Romanian artist Horia Bernea (1938–2000), putting it in conjunction with various aspects of conceptual art. It emphasizes points of contact between Bernea's practice and the existing narratives of conceptual art (including the Eastern European ones) and it provides contextual information about the artistic and socio-political environment in Romania during the period of liberalization which debuted at the end of the 1960s and lasted for a few years. The text mainly focuses on a close reading of some Bernea's works which were made in this timeframe, namely the Production Charts series and his investigation of the “post-cognitive iconography” formed by a family of “Entities” with invented names and morphologies.

The present action comes as a result of some recent legislative changes, at the level of Romania, more precisely the criminalization of "revenge pornography", but not as a distinct act, according to the provisions of the Criminal Code, but as a variant of committing the crime of violation of private life. Taking into account the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights on the right to private life, we want to analyse to what extent and how the national legislator of other Member States of the European Union understood to criminalize the behaviour mentioned above. Moreover, considering the criminalization of child pornography, from the European Council Convention on Computer Crime, as well as from the Directive 2011/92/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of December 13, 2011, we want to analyse the opportunity of the existence in Romanian legislation of a distinct criminalization, with the name of "revenge pornography", in the same title of the special part of the Criminal Code as the crime of child pornography, taking into account the protected social value, while observing whether such an orientation is found in the criminal legislation of other Member States. Another aspect that will be considered from the perspective of applying the law to different cases brought to justice is that related to international judicial cooperation when the object of criminal protection is private life.

The silver objects discovered in 1821 in the Cioara village (currently Săliștea, Alba county, Romania) belong to the fi rst Dacian hoard ever conserved in modern times. Th e hoard is preserved nowadays in the Museum of Art History in Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum); it consists of two necklaces (Figs. 2/1-2), fi ve fi bulae (Figs. 1/1-4, 2/3), four bracelets (Figs. 3/2-5), six twisted links (Figs. 2/4-9), one loop-in-loop type chain (Fig. 3/1), fi ve pendants (Figs. 3/6-10), three spiral rings (Figs. 2/10-12), a gilded fragmentary plate with anthropomorphic representations (Figs. 4, 5), a funnel-shaped object (Fig. 6/1) and three perforated discs (Figs. 6/2-4). The dressing and adornment objects are typical products of the late Latène period of silversmith art in Dacia, dated in the second half of the 1st century BC. The present interpretation of the hoard’s inventory consists of three assumptions:

Building on several international professional meetings of architects organized in Romania or abroad, this article details how various modernist principles, traditionally subsumed to Western European culture, were gradually reinterpreted as an object of policy and professional knowledge on urban space in the second and third world countries. The article analyses the dialogue between Romanian architects and their foreign colleagues. It highlights how these conversations adjusted the hierarchies and power relations between states and hegemonic centres of knowledge production. In this sense, it contributes to the recent research on the means by which the "trans- nationalization of expertise" "transformed various (semi)peripheral states into new centres of knowledge and thus outlines a new analytical space where domestic actions of the Romanian state in the area of urban policies are to be analysed not as isolated practices of a totalitarian regime, but as expressions of the entanglements between industrialization models, knowledge flows and models of territoriality that were not only globally relevant, but they also often received specific regional, national and local forms.

I examine Hungary’s Catholic arts industry and its material practices of cultural production: the institutions and professional disciplines through which devotional material objects move as they become embedded in political processes of national construction and contestation. Ethnographic data come from thirty-six months of fieldwork in Hungary and Transylvania, and focuses on three museum and gallery exhibitions of Catholic devotional objects. Building on critiques of subjectivity- and embodiment-focused research, I highlight how the institutional legacies of state socialism in Hungary and Romania inform a national politics of Catholic materiality. Hungarian cultural institutions and intellectuals have been drawn to work with Catholic art because Catholic material culture sustains a meaningful presence across multiple scales of political contestation at the local, regional, and state levels. The movement of Catholic ritual objects into the zone of high art and cultural preservation necessitates that these objects be mobilized for use within the political agendas of state-embedded institutions. Yet, this mobilization is not total. Ironies, confusions, and contradictions continue to show up in Transylvanian Hungarians’ historical memory, destabilizing these political uses.

In this article, Marius Turda discusses Romanian anthropological and serological research during the interwar period. At the time, the physical contours of the nation captured the attention of specialists and lay commentators alike, from skeptical believers in the historical destiny of the nation to those obsessed with national essence. In this context, anthropology and serology provided scientific legitimacy to the assumption that there was a racial nucleus within the Romanian nation that the natural and social environment could not obliterate; it was this racial nucleus that anthropology and serology identified as “Romanian.” This biologization of national belonging indicates that the origins of eugenic programs of biopolitical rejuvenation are to be sought in the attempt to achieve a new national body amid alleged domestic spiritual decline and unfavorable international conditions. Ultimately, the need for the rejuvenation of the ethnic community was based on the “palingenetic myth” of national renewal, comprising both the idea of spiritual metamorphosis and its fulfillment in a new ethnic ontology.

Abstract According to the Romanian legislation, the parties may agree in writing that the disputes concerning goods and other rights deriving from the non-performance of the contract be judged by other courts that, according to the law, would have territorial jurisdiction to hear the case, unless the competence of the court is exclusive. By decision no. 18/2016 the Romanian High Court of Cassation and Justice, through the competent division to judge the appeal in the interest of the law, decided that in matters of procedural substantive (material) jurisdiction of the specialized courts, the competence of the specialized courts is determined depending on the object or the nature of disputes such as those considered examples by art. 226 paragraph 1 of Law no. 71/2011 on the application of Law no. 287/2009 on Civil Code. Considering also this decision, the article aims to analyze the practical implications of another recent decision of the Romanian supreme court, namely Decision no. 561/2018, on the competence of the specialized court in litigations between entrepreneurs and, without claiming to cover extensively the subject, to offer a view on the Romanian current legal framework, on the court jurisdiction and the notion of professional, underlining the freedom of entrepreneurs or professionals of choosing the relevant court.

This article discusses how exhibition making can be seen as a creative method for building anthropological knowledge. Situations of conflict between social classes, curatorial practices and disciplines remind us of the existence of a very subtle and enduring museum lexis which governs how political ideas are put on display. Research was conducted in tandem with an exhibition the author curated in the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant 21 years after the collapse of the communist regime in South-Eastern Europe. Reflecting upon this process, the author shows how museums use a specific lexis that is based not only on existing practices but also on contingency. These facets each engage two different notions of temporality: while practice involves repetitiveness, predictability and continuity over different historical periods, contingency creates unexpected groupings of things, settings and meanings. It is the balance of the interplay between practice and contingency that dictates how the audience engages with museum discourse.

The article proposes an analysis of family cookbooks from the perspective of memory studies. Its main goal is to show that these are objects that shape family memory, helping to preserve and transmit it from one generation to the next. The first section outlines the theoretical framework, discussing the multiple layers of content and meaning in homemade cookbooks, the similarities between them and scrapbooks, as objects that can elicit voluntary (or involuntary) memories. Other theoretical issues that are essential for the problem in question are also examined: the complex relationships between individual memory and family memory, the layers that make up family memory, how family meals shape family memory, and recipe books seen as Proustian devices. The second part proposes a case study that explores the particular way in which the aspects discussed in the theoretical section are illustrated by two recipes notebooks belonging to a woman who was born in a Romanian town in 1944. As regards the research methodology, the case study is based on a life-story interview and the qualitative analysis of the two notebooks.

Renouncing the binding nature of the legal matrimonial regime[1], upon adoption of the new Civil Code, the Romanian lawmaker consecrated the patrimonial freedom of the spouses to decide as they deem appropriate and fit with regard to the property that is the object of their property relations. The New Civil Code establishes the principle of the freedom of choice of the matrimonial regime, the future spouses having the choice to enter, outside the regime of the legal community of property (the only possible matrimonial regime according to the previous regulation of the Family Code), into a matrimonial convention, on the basis of which they shall “join” either the separation of property regime or the conventional community of property regime.Regardless of the matrimonial regime chosen, whether legal or conventional, there is a common core of imperative, non-derogatory rules, which provide a minimal protection of the property relations between spouses.The imperative primary regime is enshrined in the Civil Code in force, in Book II, About Family, Title II – Marriage, Chapter VI – Property Rights and Obligations of Spouses, Section 1 – Common Provisions, Paragraph 1 – About the General Matrimonial Regime (Art. 312-320), Paragraph 2 – The Family Dwelling (Art.321-324), Paragraph 3 – Marriage Expenses (Art.325-328).In this article, the property obligations of the spouses present in the text of the law under the name of Marriage Expenses (Art. 325-328 Civil Code) are the subject of a legal review, highlighting a higher degree of concern on the part of the lawmaker, as compared to the current one, in drafting the Family Code, in terms of their regulation in relation to the accelerated dynamics of social relations.[1] Under the Family Code, which was abrogated with the entry into force of the current Romanian Civil Code, the matrimonial regime of the spouses was that of the community of goods, unique, mandatory and immutable. For development, see Vasilescu, P. Regimuri matrimoniale. Partea generală (Matrimonial Regimes. The General Part), Rosetti Publishing House,Bucharest, 2003, page 258;

In 1948, immediately after the Communist Party came to power in Romania, state officials commissioned a group of art experts to radically transform the existing public and private art collections into a national system of museums. These professionals became the new regime’s arbiters of value: the ultimate authority in assessing the cultural and financial value of artwork, and thus deciding their fate and final location. Newly available archival evidence reveals the specific strategies that they employed, and the particular political needs of the state they were able to capitalize on in order to survive and even thrive under a regime that, in principle, should have disavowed them. Even though many of them had professionally come of age during the interwar period, the art experts managed to make themselves indispensable to the new state. They functioned as a pivotal mediator between state officials and a broader public because they knew how to use the national network of museums to put the new state on display. Through the rearrangement of public and private collections across the country, and the centralization of art in museums, they produced a particular “order of things” meant not only to entice the public to view the socialist state as the pinnacle of progress and as a benefactor to the masses but also to validate their expertise and forge a new political trajectory for themselves. The strategic movement of art objects that they orchestrated reveals the material and spatial dimensions of state-making in early socialism.

Introduction . Cluj-Napoca in Transylvania, Romania, has a historically multiethnic population who maintain their language-based cultural identities. In order to harmonize interethnic relations in our multicultural society, art-therapeutical methods depend on the need to establish a sensitive relationship between the cultural horizon of individuals, thus increasing self-confidence, tolerance, resilience. Objectives The objectives are : to develop social skills, which facilitate the social and professional integration of children and adolescents belonging to ethnic groups living together, including those with disabilities. Methods Clinical art therapy have unfolded within interdisciplinary teams: a neuropsychiatry doctor, a psychologist, a pedagogue, a social worker, an art therapist– each one having a specialized role. A medical project was transformed into an artistic project: E xperimenting with complex relationships: shape of the human body – shape of man-made objects and the creation of personal shapes conduct to harmonize interethnic relations in a multicultural place. Results Focus on several objectives: - practicing the abilities to express one’s feelings - the consolidation of self-respect and of confidence - the training of empathy - the development of personal problem and conflict solving strategies -the breaking through the emotional blockages - the improvement of cognitive abilities -the release of tension, frustrations, anxieties, stress -the development of social skills Conclusions Benefits arise from experiences based in artistic creativity: materializing ideas and coping with unexpected outcomes. Disclosure No significant relationships.

A rare book for us but a compulsory object of study for Romanian-speaking teachers in all Romanian schools of Transylvania in the year 1861. In a research related to school plurilingualism in Transylvania of the 19th century, in the correspondence of the studied author, George Bariț, I discovered an order of over 100 books with the title "Studii asupra instructiunii publice în unele din statele cele mai înaintate ale Europei" ("Studies on Public "Instruction in Some of the Most advanced States of Europe" by George Costa-Foru, published at the Printing House of the National College of St. Sava, in Bucharest, in 1860. The order will be sent to all the Romanian schools in Transylvania, with which George Bariț was in permanent exchange. The author, George Costa-Foru, director of the schools Ephoria in 1857, received an important mission from the representative of the Ottoman Porte in Bucharest, the caimacan Dimitrie Al. Ghica: in four months, he will have to travel across Europe and bring back information about the most advanced schools and educational institutions in the visited states. The way they function will be the model of a school and public education reform in Wallachia, but also, as it will be historically demonstrated, they will constitute the basis of the first Public Education Act in the newly formed Romania, a state created after the union of the two historical Romanian-speaking principalities, Moldova and Wallachia. In the present article, the interest is to introduce the volume with some observations about George Costa-Foru's journey and to put for the first time in the equation the importance of this journey, presented in the book more as a report to a mission then a literary diary. A list of all the institutions he visited is for the first time made available to the general public in our article. Was this really a baiting mission for the Turks or a simple gathering of information that will be the basis for the modernization of public education in the future sovereign state? The research in progress, of which this article is a part, will endeavour to shed light on this problem of pedagogical espionage: Costa-Foru returns with more than 480 original documents from the institutions visited, which he lists at the end of the report and officially hands over to the Minister of Public Instruction in 1857, the year of his trip. The book is the final report, Costa-Foru gives to his commander, but it does not tell us how these documents were obtained. They are still unknown to the public, but they are summarised in the appendix of the report written by George Costa-Foru.

Since the 2000s an alternative engagement with the communist past has emerged across media in Romania in the shape of a generational discourse, which negotiates a post-communist generational identity for individuals growing up in the 1970s–1980s. This article focuses on the online memory practices of this self-dubbed “latchkey generation” by investigating an emerging life writing genre—the Facebook generatiography—and its reliance on the archiving of communist memorabilia in the shape of photographed objects. How do generational frames of remembrance, members of a specific generation, and the sociotechnical affordances of Facebook pages intra-act to produce this genre? And what does it “do” in the context of post-communist Romania? This article sets about answering these questions while arguing for the renewed need to think about generations as generically actualized discursive strategies in the age of social media.

AbstractThis paper describes a group of wooden objects (a trough, ladder, mallet and other pieces) found in 1817 in a salt mine in north-eastern Austria-Hungary, now Ukraine, which have recently come to light in the Hungarian Central Mining Museum in Sopron. It presents new radiocarbon dates indicating that the objects date to the Bronze Age, except for one that belongs to the early medieval period. Their function is briefly considered in the context of recent excavation and survey work in Romania, and specifically the remarkable discoveries from Băile Figa near Beclean, northern Transylvania, where several similar troughs and other objects have been found. Taken together, the finds shed light on the scale of salt exploitation in central and eastern Europe in prehistoric times.

Problems in the degradation and biodegradation of cultural heritage objects exposed or stored in public buildings and museums and of construction materials are caused (between others) by the activity of microorganisms. Biodeterioration can be observed not only at the level of the building materials of museum buildings, but also at the level of materials from which art objects are made (natural or artificial) and is determined by factors such as the chemical composition and nature of the composition material, the microclimate characteristics and exposure objects, but also through the manner and frequency of surface cleaning and housekeeping in museums. Based on this, the present study offers, through classical methods, a qualitative and quantitative identification of microorganisms inside a heritage museum building located in a temperate climate country. The purpose of the work was to determine to what extent the bacteriological microflora inside can directly and indirectly contribute to the health quality of the building’s occupants as well as the degradation of its materials and structures. The results emphasize the presence of some fungi and bacteria, among them Alternaria spp., Aspergillus spp., Penicillium spp., Cladosporium spp., and Botrytis spp. All of the analyzed rooms have a high and very high degree of fungal contamination (between 524 and 3674 UFC/m3), which can represent a danger to both human health and the integrity of the exhibitions. This is more pronounced considering that some of species of fungi identified are associated with sick building syndrome, problems in humans due to harmful exposure to viruses, bacteria, and pathogens, which generate possible symptoms such as rhinorrhea, nasal congestion, hoarseness, coughing, sneezing, and irritability for the personnel and visitors.

This article discusses a 2018 theatrical production of Hamlet with Romanian teenage arts students, directed by one of the article’s authors, actress and academic Dana Trifan Enache. As an artist, she believes that the art of theatre spectacle depends pre-eminently on the actors’ enactment, and hones her students’ acting skills and technique accordingly. The other voice in the article comes from an academic in a cognate discipline within the broad field of arts and humanities. As a feminist and medievalist, the latter has investigated the political underside of representations of the body in religious drama, amongst others. The analytic duo reflects as much the authors’ different professional formation and academic interests as their asymmetrical positioning vis-à-vis the show as respectively the play’s director and one of its spectators. Their shared occupational investment, teaching to form and hone highly specialized professional skills, and shared object of professional interest (broadly conceived), text interpretation, account nevertheless for the possibility of fruitful interdisciplinary reflection on the 2018 Hamlet. This in-depth analysis of the circumstances of the performance and technical solutions it sought challenges stereotyped dismissals of a students’ Hamlet as superannuated, flimsy or gratuitously provocative. Furthermore, a gender-aware examination of the adaptation’s original handling of characters and scenes indicates unexpected cross-cultural and diachronic commonalities between the dramatic world of the 2018 Romanian production of Hamlet and socio-cultural developments emergent in pre-Shakespearean England.

This article discusses a 2018 theatrical production of Hamlet with Romanian teenage arts students, directed by one of the article’s authors, actress and academic Dana Trifan Enache. As an artist, she believes that the art of theatre spectacle depends pre-eminently on the actors’ enactment, and hones her students’ acting skills and technique accordingly. The other voice in the article comes from an academic in a cognate discipline within the broad field of arts and humanities. As a feminist and medievalist, the latter has investigated the political underside of representations of the body in religious drama, amongst others. The analytic duo reflects as much the authors’ different professional formation and academic interests as their asymmetrical positioning vis-à-vis the show as respectively the play’s director and one of its spectators. Their shared occupational investment, teaching to form and hone highly specialized professional skills, and shared object of professional interest (broadly conceived), text interpretation, account nevertheless for the possibility of fruitful interdisciplinary reflection on the 2018 Hamlet. This in-depth analysis of the circumstances of the performance and technical solutions it sought challenges stereotyped dismissals of a students’ Hamlet as superannuated, flimsy or gratuitously provocative. Furthermore, a gender-aware examination of the adaptation’s original handling of characters and scenes indicates unexpected cross-cultural and diachronic commonalities between the dramatic world of the 2018 Romanian production of Hamlet and socio-cultural developments emergent in pre-Shakespearean England.

Increasing preoccupations and interest manifested for the Romanian language as a foreign language compose a focused and clear expression in the volume “Romanian as a foreign language. Methodology and cultural applicability”, launched at the Turku University publishing house, Finland (2018). The editors, Paul Nanu (Department of Romanian Language and Culture, University of Turku, Finland) and Emilia Ivancu (Department of Romanian Studies of the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań, Poland) with this volume, continue a series of activities dedicated to the promotion of the Romanian language and culture outside the country borders. This volume brings together a collection of articles, previously announced and briefly presented at a round table organized by the two Romanian lectors, as a section of the International Conference “Dialogue of cultures between tradition and modernity”, (Philological Research and Multicultural Dialogue Centre, Department of Philology, Faculty of History and Philology, “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia). The thirteen authors who sign the articles are teachers of Romanian as a foreign language, either in the country or abroad. The challenge launched by the organisers pointed both at the teaching methods of Romanian as a foreign language – including the authors’ reflections upon the available textbooks (Romanian language textbooks) and the cultural implications of this perspective on the Romanian language. It is probably no accident that the first article of the aforementioned volume – “Particularities of teaching Romanian as a foreign language for the preparatory year. In quest of “the ideal textbook’’ (Cristina Sicoe, University of the West, Timișoara) – brings a strict perspective upon that what should be, from the author’s point of view, “the ideal textbook”. The fact that it does not exist, and has little chances ever to exist, could maybe be explained by the multitude of variables which appear in practice, within the didactic triangle composed by teacher – student – textbook. The character of the variables is the result of particular interactions established between the components of the triad. A concurrent direction is pointed out by the considerations that make the object of the second article, “To a new textbook of Romanian language as a foreign language’’ (Ana-Maria Radu-Pop, University of the West, Timișoara). While the previous article was about an ideal textbook for foreign students in the preparatory year of Romanian, this time, the textbook in question has another target group, namely Erasmus students and students from Centres of foreign languages. Considering that this kind of target group “forms a distinct category”, the author pleads for the necessity of editing adequate textbooks with a part made of themes, vocabulary, grammar and a part made of culture and civilization – the separation into parts belongs to the author – that should consider the needs of this target group, their short stay in Romania (three months to one year) and, last but not least, the students’ poor motivation. These distinctive notes turn the existent RFL textbooks[1] in that which the author calls “level crossings”, which she explains in a humorous manner[2]. Since the ideal manual seems to be in no hurry to appear, the administrative-logistic implications of teaching Romanian as a foreign language (for the preparatory year) should be easier to align with the standards of efficiency. This matter is addressed by Mihaela Badea and Cristina Iridon from the Oil & Gas University of Ploiești, in the article “Administrative/logistic difficulties of teaching RFL. Case study”. Starting from a series of practical experiences, the authors are purposing to suggest “several ideas to improve existent methodologies of admitting foreign students and to review the ARACIS criteria from March 2017, regarding external evaluation of the ‘Romanian as a foreign language’ study programme”. Among other things, an external difficulty is highlighted (common to all universities in the country), namely the permission to register foreign students until the end of the first semester of the academic year, meaning around the middle of February. The authors punctually describe the unfortunate implications of this legal aspect and the regrettable consequences upon the quality of the educational act. They suggest that the deadline for admitting foreign students not exceed the 1st of December of every academic year. The list of difficulties in teaching Romanian as a foreign language is extremely long, reaching sensitive aspects from an ethical perspective of multiculturalism. This approach belongs to Constantin Mladin from Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia, who writes about “The role of the ethical component in the learning process of a foreign language and culture. The Macedonian experience”. Therefore, we are moving towards the intercultural competences which, as the author states, are meant to “adequately and efficiently round the acquired language competences”. In today’s Macedonian society, that which the author refers to, a society claimed to be multiethnic, multilingual and pluriconfessional, the emotional component of an intercultural approach needs a particular attention. Thus, reconfigurations of the current didactic model are necessary. The solution proposed and successfully applied by Professor Constantin Mladin is that of shaking the natural directions in which a foreign language and culture is acquired: from the source language/culture towards the target language/culture. All this is proposed in the context in which the target group is extremely heterogeneous and its “emotional capacity of letting go of the ethnocentric attitudes and perceptions upon otherness” seem to lack. When speaking about ‘barriers’, we often mean ‘difficulty’. The article written by Silvia Kried Stoian and Loredana Netedu from the Oil & Gas University of Ploiești, called “Barriers in the intercultural communication of foreign students in the preparatory year”, is the result of a micro-research done upon a group of 37 foreign students from 10 different countries/cultural spaces, belonging to different religions (plus atheists), speakers of different languages. From the start, there are many differences to be reconciled in a way reasonable enough to reduce most barriers that appear in their intercultural communication. Beneficial and obstructive factors – namely communication barriers – coexist in a complex communicational environment, which supposes identifying and solving the latter, in the aim of softening the cultural shock experienced within linguistic and cultural immersion. Several solutions are recommended by the two authors. An optimistic conclusion emerges in the end, namely the possibility that the initial inconvenient of the ethnical, linguistic and cultural heterogeneity become “an advantage in learning the Romanian language and acquiring intercultural communication”. Total immersion (linguistic and cultural), as well as the advantage it represents as far as exposure to language is concerned, is the subject of the article entitled “Cultural immersion and exposure to language”, written by Adina Curta (“1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia). Considered to be a factor of rapid progress and effectiveness of acquisition, exposure to language that arises from the force of circumstances could be extended to that what may be named orchestrated exposure to language. This phrase is consented to reunite two types of resources, “a category of statutory resources, which are the CEFRL suggestions, and a category of particular resources, which should be the activities proposed by the organizers of the preparatory year of RFL”. In this respect, we are dealing with several alternating roles of the teacher who, besides being an expert, animator, facilitator of the learning process or technician, also becomes a cultural and linguistic coach, sending to the group of immersed students a beneficial message of professional and human polyvalence. A particular experience is represented by teaching the Romanian language at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. This experience is presented by Nicoleta Neșu in the article “The Romanian language, between mother tongue and ethnic language. Case study”. The particular situation is generated by the nature of the target group, a group of students coming, on the one hand, from Romanian families, who, having lived in Italy since early childhood, have studied in the Italian language and are now studying the Romanian language (mother tongue, then ethnic language) as L1, and, on the other hand, Italian mother tongue students who study the Romanian language as a foreign language. The strategies that are used and the didactic approach are constantly in need of particularization, depending on the statute that the studied language, namely the Romanian language, has in each case. In the area of teaching methodology for Romanian as a foreign language, suggestions and analyses come from four authors, namely Eliana-Alina Popeți (West University of Timișoara), “Teaching the Romanian language to students from Romanian communities from Serbia. Vocabulary exercise”, Georgeta Orian (“1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia) “The Romanian language in the rhythm of dance and hip-hop music”, Coralia Telea (“1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia), “Explanation during the class of Romanian as a foreign language” and Emilia Ivancu (Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań, Poland), “Romanian (auto)biographic discourse or the effect of literature upon learning RFL”. The vocabulary exercise proposed to the students by Eliana-Alina Popeți is a didactic experiment through which the author checked the hypothesis according to which a visual didactic material eases the development of vocabulary, especially since the textual productions of the students, done through the technique that didactics calls “reading images”, were video recorded and submitted to mutual evaluation as well as to self-evaluation of grammar, coherence and pronunciation. The role of the authentic iconographic document is attested in the didactics of modern languages, as the aforementioned experiment confirms once again the high coefficient of interest and attention of the students, as well as the vitality and authenticity of interaction within the work groups. It is worth mentioning that these students come from the Serbian Republic and are registered in the preparatory year at the Faculty of Letters, History and Theology of the West University of Timișoara. Most of them are speakers of different Romanian patois, only found on the territory of Serbia. The activity consisted of elaborating written texts starting from an image (a postcard reproducing a portrait of the Egyptian artist Eman Osama), imagining a possible biography of the character. In the series of successful authentic documents in teaching-learning foreign languages, there is also the song. The activities described by Georgeta Orian were undertaken either with Erasmus students from the preparatory year at the “1 Decembrie 1989” University of Alba Iulia, or with Polish students (within the Department of Romanian Studies in Poznań), having high communication competences (B1-B2, or even more). There were five activities triggered by Romanian songs, chosen by criteria of sympathy with the interests of the target group: youngsters, late teenagers. The stake was “a more pleasant and, sometimes, a more useful learning process”, mostly through discovery, through recourse to musical language, which has the advantage of breaking linguistic barriers in the aim of creating a common space in which the target language, a language of “the other”, becomes the instrument of speaking about what connects us. The didactic approach, when it comes to Romanian as a foreign language taught to students of the preparatory year cannot avoid the extremely popular method of the explanation. Its story is told by Coralia Telea. With a use of high scope, the explanation steps in in various moments and contexts: for transmitting new information, for underlining mechanisms generating new rules, in evaluation activities (result appreciation, progress measurements). Still, the limits of this method are not left out, among which the risk of the teachers to annoy their audience if overbidding this method. Addressing (Polish) students from the Master’s Studies Program within the Romania Philology at the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań, Emilia Ivancu crosses, through her article, the methodological dimensions of teaching Romanian as a foreign language, entering the curricular territory of the problematics in question by proposing an optional course entitled Romanian (auto)biographic discourse”. Approaching contact with the Romanian language as a foreign language at an advanced level, the stakes of the approach and the proposed contents differ, obviously, from the ones only regarding the creation and development of the competence of communication in the Romanian Language. The studied texts have been grouped into correspondence/epistolary discourse, diaries, memoires and (auto)biography as fiction. Vasile Alecsandri, Sanda Stolojan, Paul Goma, Neagoe Basarab, Norman Manea, Mircea Eliade are just a few of the writers concerned, submitted to discussions with the help of a theoretical toolbox, offered to the students as recordings of cultural broadcasts, like Profesioniștii or Rezistența prin cultură etc. The consequences of this complex approach consisted, on the one hand, of the expansion of the readings for the students and, on the other hand, in choosing to write dissertations on these topics. A “tangible” result of Emilia Ivancu’s course is the elaboration of a volume entitled România la persoana întâi, perspective la persoana a treia (Romania in the first person, perspectives in the third person), containing seven articles written by Polish Master’s students. Master’s theses, a PhD thesis, several translations into the Polish language are also “fruits” of the initiated course. Of all these, the author extracted several conclusions supporting the merits and usefulness of her initiative. The volume ends with a review signed by Adina Curta (1 Decembrie 1918 University of Alba Iulia), “The Romanian language, a modern, wanted language. Iuliana Wainberg-Drăghiciu – Textbook of Romanian language as a foreign language”. The textbook elaborated by Iuliana Wainberg-Drăghiciu (“1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia) respects the CEFRL suggestions, points at the communicative competences (linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic) described for levels A1 and A2, has a high degree of accessibility through a trilingual dictionary (Romanian-English-French) which it offers to foreign students and through the phonetic transcription of new vocabulary units.

The wooden churches from Transylvania, Romania, are a unique and representative cultural heritage asset for rural communities, both in terms of architecture and the style of painting that defines them as monuments of national heritage. These churches are in danger of degradation because rural communities are beginning to abandon them for various motives (e.g., they are too small, are expensive to maintain, or are being replaced by modern churches, built of stone and modern materials). The reason behind their accelerated degradation is that they are covered with shingles that need to be periodically changed and repaired to prevent water from reaching the inner painting layer, a process that is, in many cases, ignored. Imperial gates are the symbol of these churches and separate the nave from the narthex. They are made entirely out of wood and were sculpted and painted manually by skilled craftsmen and still represent the central element of these churches, in terms of art and aesthetics. The digital preservation of these heritage assets is an interdisciplinary undertaking, which begins with the physico-chemical analysis of the pigments in the painting layer, continues with three-dimensional (3D) digitization of the monument and of the objects of interest (such as the imperial gates), and finishes with a digital restoration of these monuments and artefacts. This paper presents a working methodology, successfully applied in digitizing and digitally restoring imperial gates from wooden churches in Transylvania, namely from the wooden church of Voivodeni, Sălaj County, Romania (Transylvania region). X-ray fluorescence and FTIR spectroscopy were used to determine the pigments in the painting layer of these artefacts, and after they were identified, they were synthesized in laboratory conditions. The resulting color was digitized and used for digitally restoring the artefact(s) to its (their) pristine condition. To popularize these cultural heritage assets, the authors make use of virtual reality to mediate the interaction between the general public and heritage objects in their current state of preservation, in a digital environment. Moreover, to showcase how these heritage objects were degraded over time, a digitally restored version of the artefact in pristine condition is presented alongside a version in its current state (as is, digitized, but not yet digitally restored).

Most of the homes in the Budzhak region are interesting historical and architectural sites and deserve attention. Considering their current state, one can see the manifestation of a number of architectural features: well-established national traditions, authorship of folk craftsmen, the influence of academic art, historical architectural styles (Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism, Modernist), as well as the features of serial time. The unifying factor is, on the one hand, the similarity of ideological and creative thoughts and the desire of folk craftsmen to give a compositional and stylistic integrity to the whole object-space environment of the manor (in particular, in the exterior and interior of a dwelling house), on the other-ethnic identity manifests itself perfectly recognizable through ornamental motifs and forms by elements of certain national symbols. The article deals with the national features of the traditional residential architecture of Budzhak Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Moldavians, Gagauzians, Germans, selected for research as the most numerous in the national composition of Budzhak (southern Bessarabia) according to the population censuses from 1822 to 2001. Budzhak's national composition is presented in pie charts. The national identity of the compositional features and decorative and artistic means of expressing the dwellings of Budzhak, in particular its central regions (Saratov and Tatarbunar regions of Odessa region) of the given ethnic groups of the population is revealed. In general, the main large volumes and forms of traditional residential buildings are the construction of walls and roofs. Picturesque volumetric compositions acquire buildings with a combined type of roof that is used to cover the intersecting several volumes of the building, the kind with roofs with artistically decorated attic windows, located both in the plane of the roof slope and on the pediment of the main front. The subjects of detailed consideration and research are: ornamental-plastic decor made of cement, brick, lime, metal. Artistic carving -on wood and metal. Artistic forging, as a rule, has common compositional features with the architecture of the home and the estate as a whole. The entrance to the apartment house is decidedly representative and colorful enough. Borrowing and imitating natural counterparts (prototypes), folk craftsmen have created unique works that clearly reflect interethnic and religious-everyday contacts, professional borrowings, family traditions and the achievements of modern times.Photographic examples of dwellings typical of nationality (the second half of the XIX –the second half of the twentieth century) are given. The collected photos are dated 2015, 2017, 2018. Numerous photo materials of the respective states were considered by the author for the identification of houses by nationality: Ukraine, Russia, Moldavia, ATO Gagauzia, Romania, Germany, Bulgaria. The resulting comparative tables and schemes of ethnic influences are quite large in volume and can therefore be illustrated and analyzed in the next article by the author. However, the features noted briefly atthis stage made it possible to draw some conclusions, which made it possible to distinguish the typical residential homes of the studied national groups from the vast number of mixed types characteristic of the South of Ukraine as a historical and ethnographic region as a whole. The distinctive features of the dwellings of Budzhak Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Moldavians, Gagauzians, Germans are considered and detailed, places of decorative and color accents in the general composition of estates are revealed. Tradition is a form of translation of social experience in the philosophical sense. This or that type of stage borrowing of any object that evolves, including culture, is possible provided that the old goes into the new and works in it productively. Tradition acquires the features of stability when it becomes flexible, dynamic, able to absorb the best qualities of artistic cultures of other nations and groups, and also as a result of self-development. A comprehensive study of the featuresof traditional residential architecture provides the basis for the scientific substantiation of restoration works and the unveiling of the tourist potential of Budzhak. Taking into account the multifaceted architectural forms of residential objects, both geographical and sociocultural, it is possible to identify not only the visual and morphological features of traditional residential buildings of different ethnic groups, but also the semantic structure of the image of traditional architecture, which meansto develop certain techniques for the use of ethnic styles. houses for the future. The obtained factual material of this scientific article can be implemented in a wide range of architectural and design activities, as well as cultural, ethno-cultural and art-science practices.

In light of the fact that capital is a major factor in production, the development of entrepreneurial activity becomes impossible without considering the financial market and the resources provided to its subjects. Regardless of the degree of development, any entrepreneurial activity is engaged in direct contact with financial markets, in particular through institutions that act as intermediaries in raising money and services. The development of a solid basis for doing business requires understanding the rules of functioning of the financial system and its mechanisms. Considering the current economic situation, as well as the procedure for granting loans by banks, which is gradually becoming more complicated, while the national and international markets require capital movement, factoring becomes the most accessible instrument and only source of financing, with which the latter increases concurrently with sales. Therefore, the aim of this article is to study the legal nature of the factoring contract in Romania: to identify its regulation object, functions, types, legal features, and other specificities to introduce the positive experience of foreign colleagues to the legislation of Ukraine. Methodology. It is proved that the current legislation concerning the issue of factoring in Ukraine should be improved because in our country the factoring market is still not very common in spite of its rapid development in the world. Moreover, there are no thorough studies on factoring in general and a factoring agreement in particular; some issues on this topic have been considered only in scientific articles. Therefore, the authors refer to the legislation of Romania to determine those features of legal regulation, which have contributed to the rapid and effective development of this institution in this country, and to make appropriate proposals for improving domestic legislation with the use of positive foreign experience. Results. The article suggests a general description of the factoring contract in Romania: the concept of this agreement is revealed; the object of its regulation, as well as implementation of the factoring contract, is determined; its functions and features are described; the parties to the agreement and their legal status are determined. The specificities that have contributed to the rapid enlargement of factoring in Romania are given particular consideration. Practical implication. The factoring agreement as an operating instrument for credit institutions is especially important due to its constant practical applicability that enables to choose the optimal commercial activity both at the national and international levels. Relevance/originality. In Ukraine, given the need for further development of entrepreneurial activity, the issue of increasing total factoring operations is important. The implementation of positive international experience on this issue in domestic legislation is essential for this stage.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to foreground the ways in which material objects emerged as a kind of classificatory force during a visit to a local museum in rural Romania. It considers ways in which classification both influences and is influenced by the spatio-temporal assemblages of things. Design/methodology/approach – Visual and textual ethnographic field data collected to document the museum tour are interpreted using a phenomenological approach. Jane Bennett’s agency of assemblage is used to contextualize these instants of interruption within the space/time arrangements of objects within the museum. Findings – The “marginal” category of translator commentary emerged during data coding to reveal “instants of interruption.” These instants exhibited classificatory tendencies that revealed relationships between seemingly disparate elements. As such, the translator acted as a kind of third-party classificatory force that illuminated how relationships between physical assemblages of things in the world can act as a force for new knowledge production. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the literature on social classification and document theory by revealing how alternative approaches to classification can open up additional avenues for research and knowledge discovery.

This essay explores the intersection between interiority, urbanism, and the human perception. I view interiority as a condition of the senses rather than an indoor place. Revelations of interiority can be discovered within urban realm, in public spaces, and in intimate interior conditions. I am especially interested in “public interiority” or these cases of interiority that can be found in exterior urban places. Understanding interiority as a perceived condition grounds the built environment in phenomenology, varied human experiences, and everyday conditions. Herein, I begin with an ontology of interiority, which focuses on various ways of perceiving the nature of things – phenomenology, structuralism and object-oriented-ontology (OOO). From there, I will analyze a taxonomy of public interiorities including various strains of form-based, programmatic, atmospheric, and psychological public interiorities. Using real-world examples from my previous research in Bucharest, Romania, New York and [location hidden] as well as well-established examples in art and design, I will then analyze various urban experiences of interiority and the way built conditions shape experience. In this way, I will bring the interior to the city.

This paper aims to deduce the main features of Eugen Simion’s criticism in relation to his main ideational models. Emphasis is placed on the permanent shift between identification and critical distancing, these two processes contributing to a certain methodology of the interpretative act. Eugen Simion’s moderate discourse implies a certain mediation of opposites, thus reaching a rejection of univocal postulates and perspectives, considered definitive and unassailable. However, the Romanian critic does not question some ideas just for the sheer pleasure of deliberation, even though, from numerous pages, it follows that this pleasure might be real. He is mainly interested in the practical efficiency of some methods of literary interpretation and valorization through the suitability to the object. Concepts can be empty of essence if they have no practical utility. From this perspective, Eugen Simion distances himself from some of his models, remaining in their spirit, but not in their letter. The paper calls into question the Lovinescianism of Eugen Simion by appealing to the way in which the author of The Poets’ Morning brings into his critical system some concepts existing in the European literary theory of the 60s. And in this case the assimilation / absorption is mediated by the appropriateness to the object. Moreover, assimilation becomes, through this mediation, critical rewriting.

Struggles between current tenants and the heirs of former owners over property rights in post-socialist housing restitution in Romania often unfold through kinship measurements. I use the notion of ‘boundary kin’—relatives who in different situations may be considered as either near or distant—to capture the role that kinship measurements play in these conflicts. Expanding ties to the past, a large number of persons are seeking restitution. In this ‘inheritance bubble’, the importance of the material basis of measurements in documenting and certifying kinship increases. In an effort to limit restitution, tenants question the genealogical, geographical, and temporal proximity between potential heirs and original owners, embedding kinship measurements instead in care, past suffering, and material engagements with, and knowledge of, the restitution object.

In a period ranging from the end of the nineteenth century until the first quarter of the next century, territories or provinces whose political affiliation changed were subjected to a form of “nationalization”. Depending on the national specifics of the beneficiary state, this process received names such as “Germanization”, “Frenchification”, “Czechization”, “Slovakization” or “Romanianization”. After eliminating the ambiguities that might designate this last term, the study tried to promote a clear perspective by taking the town of Alba Iulia as the object of a case study. In this situation too, the richness of the sources and the problematics would have led to the elaboration of a text the size of a book. Consequently, the research was circumscribed to identifying the changes some socio-professional groups went through after 1918, including Romanian “economists” (farmers), craftsmen and tradesmen. Furthermore, the superior repositioning or the shaping of some segments of national elites was followed up: lawyers, secondary professors. The present study carries on the research in this area by approaching some cultural, economic and event-based aspects.

Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days ( 4, 3, 2 for short) is a classic of the new wave in Romanian cinema. Centred on the paternalistic and patriarchal relationship between political power and women, this analysis reveals the psychological effects of traumatic situations and how unconscious (hidden, often irrational) drives determine human behaviour in subjects living under totalitarianism. This article provides a reading of the film through such concepts as the (male) gaze, the law in relation to the figure of the father and the Lacanian orders of the symbolic and the real, the split personality of the abused woman as both subject and object, and life/death instincts in the face of totalitarian intrusion into the reproductive rights of women. This kind of analysis sheds new light on the nuances of the film and the significance of the silence in it by exposing the symbolic reality of communist totalitarianism as opposed to a seemingly authentic Lacanian real that is hidden in the silence and in the materiality of the female body.

An improper indoor microclimate has adverse effects on the state of preservation of historical textiles arranged in them, favoring the development of bacteriological microflora. The current study aims to combine traditional and innovative methods for cleaning and preserving a 100-year-old traditional blouse from Bihor, Romania. The material of the blouse was impregnated with 30 and 70 ppm silver nanosuspensions and washed with a substance obtained from boiling natural wood ash (lye). The research goals were to determine the antimicrobial action of lye washing and silver nanoparticles applied to the analyzed textile material and identify the way in which the environmental factors (light) act upon the conservation degree of textile objects impregnated with silver nanoparticles. All these procedures are eco-friendly and do not cause any damage to the constituent material of the fabrics. The use of the hyperspectral imaging technique proved the permeation of both 30 and 70 ppm silver nanosuspensions into the textile, producing changes in the textile’s reflectance spectrum after being treated with them. The results showed anti-bactericidal/fungal properties of both silver nanoparticles and lye. Microbiological analyses revealed that bacterial colonies were reduced to more than 95% in both cases. The antibacterial effect of silver nanoparticles on the textile material of the blouse was maintained throughout the duration of the study, and under normal environmental conditions, the effects would remain active for a long period.

Acting as a usual means of everyday communication and collaboration, dialogue is also a fundamental mode of human presence in the world. It is innate and, therefore, feels organic to people. Nothing but a dialogue determines and defines the inborn human potential of reflexivity, empathy and communitivity. Naturally, it is hardly surprising that as a phenomenon, a dialogue constantly fell within the purview of most prominent European thinkers and throughout different historical epochs, in the spaces of philosophy and communication, it unfolded in a diverse and multidimensional manner. Ancient Greek philosopher Plato wrote in the form of dialogue, this way opening the possibility to a reader to learn about the world and the order of things as well as defining a certain relationship between the perceiving subject and the perceivable object. In the early Middle Ages, writings of Saint Augustine encouraged people to immerse into themselves and start a conversation with God, which established a certain living relationship between spaces empirical and transcendental. Much later, towards the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, German phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, who developed the theory of the intentionality of the consciousness, perceived that no living relationship between people is feasible without intersubjectivity. In this case, the communication is conditioned on the focus of at least two subjects on a certain object. This object, in particular, ensures the potential of the meaning, content and the purpose of communication. Another German author Martin Buber treated the dialogue as a phenomenon, in which an individual establishes a personal relationship with the Christian God, and this gives rise to a certain immediacy: a confrontation with the Ruler of the Kingdom of Heaven gives meaning to all the other interpersonal relationships. These are but few different philosophical interpretations of dialogue as a phenomenon. The universe of issues related to dialogue emerges from thinking perspectives of philosophers as well as communication theorists. On the one hand, the perspective of communication trivializes the phenomenon of dialogue, depriving it of its depth and profoundness; and on the other hand, it defines and specifies the concept of dialogue, assigning to it a form or function. This issue of the journal is devoted to the analysis of the phenomenon of dialogue both in the fields of philosophy and communication, inquiring into different contexts of its development. In her article Communication Solutions by Improving Interactive Art Projects, Gintarė Vainalavičiūtė analyses the relationship between visual arts and contemporary technologies, which determines both the rise of the forms of dialogue and non-traditional understanding of works of art. Mindaugas Stoškus contributed an article entitled Disciplines of Political Philosophy and Political Science: Antagonism, Cooperation or Indifference? in which he investigates the relationship between these two disciplines, conditions and problems pertaining to their dialogue, and the particularly intensified dynamics of the dialogue in the fifties of the 20th century. In their article Online Artistic Activism: Case-Study of Hungarian-Romanian Intercultural Communication, Gizela Horváth and Rozália Klára Bakó delve into the interactive relationship between works of art and their perceiver, as these works of art send messages via the social media environment. Moral Perception, Cognition, and Dialogue is an article authored by Vojko Strahovnik, in which he examines the causes for the rise of cases that hinder intercommunication and mutual understanding, such as disagreement, intercultural dialogues, etc. Problems of visual communication and the specificity of visual languages, bringing together subjects into dialogue are discussed by Arto Mutanen in his article Relativity of Visual Communication. Another article entitled Scientific Realism versus Antirealism in Science Education is a contribution by Seungbae Park, in which he attempts to define how the dialogue between teachers and students is possible, as he takes the position stating that the doctrine of scientific realism is much more effective than provided opportunities of scientific antirealism. And finally, Algis Mickūnas, in his article The Different Other and Dialogue, discusses the reasons why members of different communities find it difficult to establish dialogue-based relationships and why in some cases they remain imprisoned in the state of a monologue. This issue of the journal presents a truly wide field of investigations into opportunities and obstacles for communication, interaction and collaboration. It is pleasing to see that representatives of various humanities and social sciences joined the same dialogue. Looking forward to the productive insights in the future, the Editor would like to express her gratitude to the authors of this issue.

The article, written during the implementation of the international Russian-Hungarian project, is of an overview nature. The author's goal is to expand the understanding of Russian colleagues about the Hungarian architecture of the late XIX – first third of the XX centuries. Szeged was chosen as an example of a large-scale reconstruction: the city, almost completely destroyed by the flood of 1879, was rebuilt in a short period and became the "southern capital" of Hungary. Based on field research in 2022, three layers of the architectural and spatial landscape of Szeged are considered: "imperial" (borderless classicism and historicism), "national" (Magyar secession) and interwar (Art Deco). The article is illustrated with photographs of the Hungarian participant of the project G. Csonadi. The object of the study is the city of Szeged, located 169 km south of Budapest, near today's Hungarian-Romanian and Hungarian-Serbian borders, at the confluence of the Tisza and Maros rivers. It is the second most important city in Hungary, the most important point on the "mental map" of the country, the capital of the Hungarian plain and a symbol of the revival of the national spirit. The subject of the study is the process of constructing an architectural "image of the Motherland". In our work, we use an interdisciplinary approach, combining elements of history, architecture, cultural studies and social geography. This allows us to explore and analyze architectural heritage more deeply, its impact on the formation of the cultural landscape and social processes. Using the example of the southern Hungarian city of Szeged, the process of constructing the "image of the Motherland" developed in a time perspective is considered. We have identified several layers in the architectural landscape of Szeged: regular-imperial (Biedermeier, neo-Baroque, borderless classicism), national-romantic (from historicism in the spirit of the French Renaissance to the Magyar secession), interwar (Art Deco based on neo-Romanticism). We see that the "spirit of the times" and the "image of the Motherland" are not static and are embodied in various forms. The image of "little Vienna", resurrected according to the patterns of the Enlightenment era on the far periphery of the Empire, is being transformed under the onslaught of the nationally oriented bourgeoisie. Bizarre and eccentric architectural experiments sponsored by private original customers are replaced by monumental pathos ensembles that help citizens jointly survive the deepest collective psychotrauma. The Synagogue, the Cathedral, the University and the "sunny houses" embody different facets of the Hungarian identity.

One of the directions of development of the tourism industry is health tourism. Today, having natural opportunities and high potential, it is possible to state the absence of highly competitive positions in this sector of the national economy of some developing countries. For example, in Ukraine, sanatorium-and-spa institutions are one of the priority areas for the development of domestic and foreign tourism, one of the most stable types of tourism markets. So, the object of the research is the Clinical Sanatorium named after V. I. Pirohov «Kuialnyk» (Odesa region, Ukraine). The subject of the research is ways to improve the Clinical Sanatorium named after V. I. Pirohov «Kuialnyk». The available and potential reserves of medical resources, taking into account their qualitative and quantitative characteristics, can serve as the basis for the creation of such tourism products that are now very popular in the world, for example, the provision of spa services. The authors state the absence of highly competitive positions in this sector. In the current market conditions, the sanatorium business in Ukraine is undergoing structural changes. The branding scheme proposed by the authors of the Clinical Sanatorium named after V. I. Pirohov «Kuialnyk» allows improving the quality of spa services and marketing effectiveness. After all, the modern basis of the activity of tourist organizations is determined by the factor of informatization of society. Since the vast majority of visitors to the resort are from Belarus, Moldova, it is interesting that the resort also has its share of international tourists from European countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, etc.). Thanks to the successful identification of the strengths and needs of consumers, it can be assumed that the international tourist flow will increase, because there are all the necessary conditions for this. The new branding scheme developed by the authors will act as a catalyst and stimulator for the growth of the number of visitors to the Odesa region. The prospect of this study lies in the search for new solutions for the promotion, reorganization of SPA institutions in the market of health tourism services in Ukraine. The synergy of the optimal use of natural health-improving resources and the best management solutions for the use of information support create a competitive tourism product, which in turn will lead to an increase in international tourists.

Formulation of the problem. At the current stage, concertmaster activity as a kind of performing art requires a comprehensive study to justificatе the artistic effectiveness of the artist. Thereby, there was a need for research of the concertmaster activity of Oleksandr Nazarenko (Professor of the Department of Ukrainian Folk Instruments in I. P. Kotlyarevsky Kharkiv National University of Arts), in order to characterize his performing skills. This article is about the instrumental work of a accordionist, which is an organic component of the activities of art institutions in a variety of forms of work with the listener. The nuances of the instrumental accompaniment of a vocal composition (and not only) in conditions of genre and style diversity of the musical life of Kharkiv were the peculiarity of fruitful activity of the musician for many years. Is there a connection between this form of creative activity (at first glance, simple and not the most important) and other manifestations of the academic professional development of a musician? The answer to this question is the relevance of the topic of the article, devoted to the characteristics of O. Nazarenko’s concertmaster activity. The lack of a special study of the stylistic aspects of his concertmaster’s activity drove a necessitaty to take note to the biographical facts of the artist’s life in order to generalize the components of his performing skills. Analysis of the latest publications on the topic. O. Nazarenko’s compositional work for accordion is presented in the researches of Kharkiv accordionists and musicologists Y. Dyachenko (2012), M. Plushenko (2017), I. Snedkova (2016), A. Sagittarius (2018).However, these authors did not address the problem of concertmaster activity of O. Nazarenko, which was an important part of his professional growth as a model for the young generation of accordionists, drawing attention to this aspect of his performing arts. The object of research is the musical activity of O. Nazarenko; subject – concertmaster component of the artist’s creative universalism. The purpose of the article is to comprehensively research the process of evolution of the concertmaster’s activity of the famous Kharkiv accordionist Oleksandr Nazarenko. The research methodology is based on a complex of historical, genre-style and system approaches. Presenting of the main material. His acquaintance with concertmaster’s skill and it’s mastering O. Nazarenko began quite early – during the third year in B. Lyatoshynsky Kharkiv Music School (1955). Working with artists, he went with concerts to small factories, factory workshops (during breaks in the “red corners”), dormitories and clubs, where were held 40-minute meetings, where O. Nazarenko was accompanying dancers and vocalists. While studying at the Kharkiv Conservatory (1957–1962), he toured with a student team, where he was accompanying the instruments of the folk orchestra (domra, balalaika), symphony orchestra (violin, cello) and vocal performances. O. Nazarenko strived for performing activity, and therefore he chose the direction of creative work as a soloist-accordionist of the Kharkiv Regional Philharmonic (1962–1967), where together with solo performances he began professional concertmaster activity, working in various genres (vocal, dance and original). After graduating from the conservatory, O. Nazarenko paid much attention to the technique of reading from a sheet of works for piano, studied professional accompaniment to soloists, gained experience in concertmaster’s work to learn the new repertoire with artists. At the Department of Folk Instruments, students and teachers competed with each other in better technique of reading from a sheet, transposition into any key, play a tune by ear, improvisation, and skillfully translation the piano texture into accordion. According to the professor’s words, in order not to lose his performance skill during the tour and to maintain the technical level, he tried to practice even on a bus. He played accordion technical exercises with ready-made chords and fragments from masterpiece works (G. Diniku “Romanian round dance”, introduction to the opera “Ruslan” by M. Glinka); always worked on the plastic of his right hand. Most often, the acquaintance with the musical text took place during the move or a short time before the concert. Soloists-vocalists gave piano notes and indicated in what key they were comfortable to sing. Thus, the accordionist had to analyse the texture without an instrument, sing the melody in the required key with his inner ear, and transpose the musical material. O. Nazarenko tried to enrich the instrumental accompaniment with texture (counterpoint, melodic undertones) in order to move away from the primitive form (bass-chord support). The intention to complicate the accordion part made O. Nazarenko to improve his skills constantly in the selection of means of expression, intonation, the search for timbre diversity, all means which create true artistic values. Accompanying the soloists, the artist paid special attention to the thinning of the sound, imitating stringed instruments. While accompanying a group of brass instruments of a symphony orchestra (trumpet, trombone), he tried to convey the effect of “spaciousness”, equalling the techniques of sound production of brass instruments. Thus, performing a popular song of the Great Patriotic War “At Nameless Height”, O. Nazarenko imitated the replicas of the trumpet signal, and in the song “Buchenwald’s alarm” his performance gained maximum tension, sharpening and concentration in the transmission of bells. The world-famous song for the musical of the same name “Hello, Dolly” accompanied by O. Nazarenko gained a swing accent due to the alternation of the first and fourth parts of the bar and bright intonation. The material for accompaniment in the original genres (acrobats, jugglers, tightrope walkers, illusionists) was Latin American tunes (“Malagenya”, rumba “Valencia”), music for movies (“Serenade of the Sunny Valley”), personal improvisations. Between 1967 and 1987, the Union of Composers of Ukraine had author’s concerts-meetings, where among soloists were present the artists from the Philharmonic, the Opera House and teachers from the Institute of Arts. Well-known composers of Kharkiv such as G. Finarovsky, O. Zhuk, T. Kravtsov, F. Bogdanov, I. Kovach, N. Yukhnovska, O. Litvinov, G. Faintukh, V. Zolotukhin selected the soloists and completed the concert program. In general, during the whole period devoted to concertmaster’s activity, O. Nazarenko performed with more than a hundred soloists-vocalists of academic (bass, baritone, soprano, mezzo-soprano) and folk singing, as well as with numerous instrumentalists. Conclusions. Fruitful work on improving his own professionalism made the master a famous concertmaster-accordionist of Kharkiv. Collaboration with talented artists filled the emotional and intellectual state of the young musician, a rich palette of genres allowed the musician to think more widely and go beyond academism. The variety in the choice of means of expression enriched the technique of reading from a sheet, transposing and transition a piano works into an accordion. The expansion of the dramatic functions of the accordion accompaniment, the arsenal of means of expression contributed to the formation of a new type of ensemble based on the cocreation (equality / subordination) of its participants. This determined the active role of the accordionist concertmaster at all stages of the development of the interpretation plan: from the search for a key idea to its implementation on the concert stage. Working as an accompanist influenced not only his performing skills, but also Nazarenko’s work as a composer. Thanks to the personality of O. Nazarenko, the concertmaster activity of a whole generation of accordionists reached a qualitatively new professional level, and the profession of accompanist became popular among the younger generations working in this complex performance format.

The purpose of the article is to analyse the engineering labour market on the example of the profession of design engineer in modern conditions of the construction market in Ukraine and abroad. It is also necessary to study the formation of the integrated view of the structure, state and dynamics of the labour market in design enterprises; qualification requirements for engineers; compliance of the vocational education system with these requirements. Design is a type of labour activity in construction as a branch of professional activity. The article contains statistical indicators of wages that characterize the profession of design engineer, and innovative activities of design enterprises. The indicator of the level of innovative development of design enterprises is the quality of products (projects). One of the main characteristics of design is the price of the product. It includes the Customer’s assessment of all other design properties. Pricing issues have been and continue to be one of the guiding problems of the country’s construction industry, including design and the salaries of design engineers. Methodology. The design market in Ukraine has a situation that reflects the overall state of the construction industry. The development of this type of business and its participants is differently influenced by many factors. Project market participants in Ukraine can be classified: by the form of ownership – state departmental institutions and commercial structures; by the volume of work – design enterprises and design institutes that act as general designers, who mainly perform all stages of the project. Architectural workshops, mainly specializing in the stages of “sketch project” and “project”; design departments at the construction and assembly organizations performing stages “working design”, “working documentation”, separate sections of projects or only detailing for production. There were about 70 design enterprises and about 200 architectural workshops in Kyiv in 2016, according to the Association of Design Enterprises. The potential of Ukraine as a “technical” state, that is able to solve complex problems and generate complex solutions and products with high added value, is due to the potential of the educational field of technical direction. Accordingly, in 2016 in Ukraine, the relative number of graduates of technical specialties was 2 times more than in the UK or Poland, namely, in European countries, thousands of people: Ukraine – 130; France – 105; Germany – 93; Turkey – 75; Great Britain – 71; Poland – 66; Spain – 56; Italy – 48; Romania – 39. In 2015-2016, training in the fields of construction specialties in Ukraine was carried out by 49 higher education institutions. Today, one of the shortcomings of education is the lack of modern curricula; technical fields are getting excessively humanitarian and detachment from practice, in particular, the application of European standards. Some Western academic subjects are not taught in Ukrainian universities at all, which reduces the competitiveness of graduates. Certification of responsible executors of design works in construction in 2012 was a significant step towards the liberalization of the market of design services. The responsibility of engineers was personified and strengthened, but at the same time their object and financial possibilities were increased. As of December 2015, more than 22,000 design engineers have been certified in Ukraine. It can be stated that for the period 2016-2019, a fairly developed market of design services has been formed in Ukraine. Its key features are the attraction to large cities, diversification by specialties and grounds on the existing, including the Soviet, experience, as well as concentration and duplication of functions, in particular, design institutes by the commercial sector, etc. Significant potential is due to intellectual capacity, diversity of tasks and the accumulated practice of Ukrainian designers, which provides certain advantages in the international market of design services. Today, the customer is moving away from design technologies, which means that the designer’s work must be built in such a way that the customer understands the need for investment at the design stage of the facility, taking into account further operation. The lack of design and the need to revise salaries affects the value of real estate. The lack of engineers affects the organization of construction and the market as a whole. Increasing the salaries of design engineers, creating more favourable working conditions lead to an increase in the cost of construction work from 9 to 15%. Understanding the difficulties faced by the design industry, it is logical to think about the ways to overcome them in the near future. Conclusion. Nowadays, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the analysis of the engineering labour market in construction allows to understand the innovative activity of the project enterprise and to mark the course of further development of the market of design services in Ukraine. Reducing unhealthy competition among designers is possible due to new approaches to work aimed at optimizing and improving the performance of design companies. Stories of design engineers having to leave their favourite profession to make a living are a thing of the past. Now it is a prestigious and profitable speciality. To be relevant in the profession, you must, first of all, learn foreign languages, read technical literature in English. Self-education, i.e. the ability to independently search and analyse information, to develop oneself as a specialist, is of great importance. High erudition is a quality possessed by the Soviet-era engineers and often lacking in many modern design engineers. At the same time, it is of great importance because the building is a single organism, and the design engineer must understand not only construction, but also related fields. The main feature that distinguishes a design engineer is a certain mindset. And the work must be highly paid for this. Considering the issue of the engineering labour market in Ukraine, it is safe to say that there are temporary professions that are in vogue, and there are those that will always be in demand, and the profession of design engineer is one of them.

Metal detection is a controversial topic within the contemporary cultural environment, due to its complex and sensitive implications within national legislations, cultural policies and participative involvement of cititzens in scientific data collection. However, this technology proved to have a huge potential for any research and investigations, especially for artistic research projects. The amount of data, archaeological context and artifacts is impressive and enables approach, development, progress and fair conclusions, at the scientific level, for artistic projects based on the study of modern history artifacts. The investigative project presented here is based on the last five years of research activity as Romanian artist practitioner of metal detecting, with comparative references to the main and trend setting Romanian artistic project of metal detecting R.A.P.I. – Romanian Archaeological Photography Index, developed by Michele Bressan and Bogdan Gоrbovan, both professional photographers and graduates of National University of Arts, Bucharest. Our approach is oriented towards the potential sculptural value of artifacts detected and unearthed within the world war 1 sites from the specific area of Prahova Valley, the place of fierce mountain battles at the end of 1916. As in the R.A.P.I. project, we used the wideranging photographic documentation of detected and dig-out military artifacts, but in more creative approach , rather than documentary, following the sculptural potential of free composition of objects and artifacts. Overdesigned and over-engineered, fabricated under high quality military standards or on the contrary, under industrial war effort ersatz regulations, these artifacts, wearing the centennial decay of underground and oblivion, express certain aestehtic qualities if composed in creative ways, as sculptural objects. The main objective of this study is the potential of metal detecting as a research tool to identify artifacts with sculptural readymade potential, composed and photographically investigated within creativity methods of contemporary sculpture. Used in the appropriate circumstances of legality, ethics, scientific rigor and also artistic creativity, metal detecting would acquire a major status within cultural enviroment through interdisciplinary artistic research projects combining art, archaeological survey, immersive history and participative citizen science.

Secu Monastery, founded by the great Vornic Nestor Ureche in 1602, has treasured, over the centuries, not only the faith of the Romanians, but also material evidence of their existence in Moldavian lands. Most of the valuable cult objects − vestments, manuscripts, prints, metal objects − represent, nowadays, the heritage of Secu Monastery Museum. The archaeological researches carried out, between June 4-6, 2007 at Secu Monastery, on the occasion of the solemn proclamation of the canonization, on August 30 of Metropolitan Varlaam, brought to light, among other things, material, historical testimonies, in a fragmentary state, of textile art with a religious symbolism. The conservation-restoration works carried out, for these archaeological textile fragments, by the specialists of the Center for Research and Conservation-Restoration of Cultural Heritage within “Moldova” National Museum Complex of Iași, did not only aim at the physical-chemical and physical-mechanical stabilization of the materials components in order to preserve them over the centuries, but also to reveal some information related to the identification of the nature of the composing materials, the production technique and some decorative motifs with a religious symbolism.

Across prehistoric Europe several techniques were used to produce salt, including solar evaporation and the briquetage method. Here, the authors focus on a third technique used in Romania and western Ukraine. Building on excavations at Băile Figa and a series of wooden troughs found there, the authors conduct experiments to elucidate how these objects may have been used in salt production: to drip water onto rock salt surfaces to break them up; or to filter and/or concentrate brine by decanting and/or heating. The results demonstrate the troughs are ineffective at concentrating brine, but highly efficient at breaking up rock salt and cleaning the brine of insoluble impurities.