Following a gentleman's expedition: Odobescu and the crypts from northern Buzău

Abstract

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.

General topography of Prahova County, Romania

“…Elevation, hydrography and settlements, together with basic geographical names are not enough to provide a complete view of the regional landscape. This approach needed the creation of a new symbol library as the available symbols were limited (Beconytė, Eismontaitė, & Žemaitienė, 2013;Buterez, 2012).…”

Monasteries of Buzău County, Romania (fifteenth–twenty-first centuries)

“…One of the main features of the historical diocese of Buzău was the impressive extent of its monastic life, which was sometimes compared to that of Mount Athos in terms of practice and way of life. Its backbone was indeed the hesychast tradition, rigorously followed by monks especially in the northern part of Buzău, where they developed a vast network of rock-hewn churches and cells before the fifteenth century (Buterez, 2012). Alongside members of the clergy, in the following period, both Wallachian princes and local boyars founded a large number of monasteries, which they endowed with estates, goods and tax exemptions.…”