This paper draws attention to the unexploited potential of cartographic material related to Ploieşti city, Romania, from the oldest reports to the modern. The cartographic document may bring valuable, more often than not original, information in order to improve understandings of behavioural patterns and the evolution of prehistoric communities. The study of the distribution and dynamics of burial mounds (tumuli) associated with the Bronze Age, within the perimeter of Ploieşti city and its metropolitan area, is one of the first applications of this kind of analysis made in Romania, and succeeds in showing the importance of using direct or indirect data from this category of cartographic documents for archaeological studies. Moreover, it demonstrates that, because geosystems and social systems are not static in space and time, a diachronic cartographic study provides the opportunity for a phenomenological focus on the evolutional issues of tumuli – spatiality, boundaries, distances and density.

The aim of this project is to create a map at the scale of 1:275 000 of all Christian Orthodox monasteries that existed between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, in the county of Buzău, Romania. This area has been one of the biggest centers of Orthodox monasticism in the country, in a time when monasteries were the main centers of culture, science and education. This paper describes how the map was created, while also explaining its purpose and the challenges that emerge in mapping the monasticism and its basic features. The project which underpins the map is unique because it integrates and synthesizes results from historical-geographical studies, which have not yet been depicted cartographically. The map, initially begun in 2012, is based on a large amount of information gathered from a number of collections of historical documents, which were analyzed, validated and complemented in several field campaigns carried out between 2008 and 2015. The procedure, performed with difficulty because of numerous gaps in historical sources and few archaeological evidence, intends to represent a cartographic model for illustrating a phenomenon that otherwise sought to avoid any social exposure.

Subsequent to the period in which he became interested in the Buzȃu district and a short time after receiving the first answers to his archaeological questionnaire, Romanian writer and archaeologist Alexandru Odobescu made a remarkable discovery. The information he gathered led to the identification of a remote area in northern Buzȃu, Romania, marked by the existence of a large number of mysterious caves, tombs, and rooms carved in stone. He referred to them as crypts, and carefully planned an expedition in the Alunişu -Nuc area.Although Odobescu, helped by the Swiss painter Henri Trenk, conducted field research in 1871, he never published his findings or drew conclusions regarding the origin of the crypts, thus his manuscripts remained forgotten in the Romanian Academy archives. This paper aims to rediscover a part of Odobescu's unfinished research through the creation of a map which helps us understand the geographical space within which he made his discoveries at the end of the nineteenth century.

No abstract

Mapping the geogenic radon potential in Buzău County is part of a research project aiming to apply research for sustainable development and economic growth following the principles of geoconservation in order to support the 'Buzău Land' UNESCO Geopark initiative. The mapping of geogenic radon will be used as an overview for planning purposes. The main geological formations of the studied area were identified as Cretaceous and Paleogene flysch, included in a thin-skinned nappes pile and consisting of alternating sandstones, marls, clays and, subordinately, conglomerates, all tightly folded or faulted. Significant variations in the concentration of radon were therefore determined in the ground. However, no high values were determined, the maximum measured activity concentration being 101.6 kBq m-3.