The 7th International Conference on the Roman Danubian Provinces has started. Sofia/Vidin (September 24th – 28th, 2024)

The 7th International Conference on the Roman Danubian Provinces was officially opened on September 23rd, 2024, in the building of the National Archaeological Institute with Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The ceremony included the Director of NAIM-BAS, Associated Professor Dr. Hristo Popov, and the Ambassador of the Republic of Italy in Bulgaria, Josephina Dzara.

The conference is organized by a committee that includes Prof. Ludmil Vagalinski, Prof. Georgi Atanasov, Assoc Prof. Zdravko Dimitrov, Assoc. Prof. Ivo Topalilov, D-r Vladislav Jivkov, and D-r Varbin Varbanov. Honorary members of the committee are Assoc. Prof. Gergana Kabakchieva and Assoc. Prof. Evgenia Gencheva. Among the organizers are the young scholars of NAIM-BAS: Maria Avramova, Alexander Ivanov, and Atanas Danov.

The conference is one of the most significant and competent events in Archaeology, and this year, Bulgaria hosted it. 141 authors participated in the event. The program includes 97 reports and 21 posters. The tentative title is “Frontier Landscapes along the Danube.” The organizers' main idea is to respond to the latest developments and research methods in field archaeology. Over the past decades, excavation, study, and interpretation of a site’s past have always been coupled with research focusing on a comprehensive study of the entire region, not only on a particular archaeological complex.

This is, indeed, the key-concept of the conference – to gain insight and awareness of the past and the processes that have taken place along the Danube frontier of the Roman Empire, both considering the development of the regions and the settlement development patterns – a military fort, satellite settlements, the surrounding settlements of the local population, workshops, farms, economy, and transport routes.

That is why are proposed four main panel sessions for the conference:

- Landscapes along the Danubian frontier of the Roman Empire: relations between

- military forts – civilian structures; military forts – local settlements; transport routes;

- satellite settlements; the overall model of the military zones of the Roman Empire; the role of workshops and manufacturing centres, of local industries in the frontier zone – ceramic and other types of manufacturing centres for household goods, stonemasons’ workshops and quarries, etc.;

- Religion and religious cults in the landscapes of the Danubian frontier. The archaeological and epigraphic data from the Danube Limes contain particularly abundant data from religious communities, sanctuaries, and necropolises. The awareness and interpretation patterns of data from these studies are of interest. Any changes in the burial practices and rituals are very curious and intriguing;

- Coin circulation along the Danube Limes – within and beyond the imperial borders. The dynamics of coin circulation, the connections, contacts and influences it

- shows represent a crucial point of research on the frontier zone. Furthermore, they

- also provide direct data on the lifestyle and the changes taking place in the barbarian lands in direct contact with the Limes zone;

- Data from the latest archaeological excavations, field surveys, various analyses,

- interdisciplinary studies and any other research on the frontier of the Roman Empire.

The scientific forum meetings are held in the building of the Cultural Center, “Jules Pasccin,” Vidin synagogue. The conference co-organizers are the National Archaeological Institute with Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the Vidin Municipality, the Regional History Museum—Vidin, and the University of Ferrara, Italy.

The program and the abstracts of the conference can be downloaded from the official site of the event: https://danubianprovinces7.naim.bg/