Sorin NEMETI (Universitatea „Babeș-Bolyai” din Cluj-Napoca)
ȘCOALA DE ARHEOLOGIE DE LA CLUJ ȘI STUDIUL RELIGIEI ROMANE DIN DACIA
Keywords: Archaeology “School”, Roman Religion, Dacia, Historiography.
Abstract: The Archaeology School from Cluj and the Study of Roman Religion in Dacia. The article examines the genesis and development of the so-called “Cluj school” of ancient history and archaeology, a scholarly tradition that is difficult to define but became institutionally structured after 1919 through the University of Upper Dacia, the Institute of Classical Studies, the Institute of History of the Romanian Academy, and the Cluj History Museum. Constantin Daicoviciu played a central role, formulating in the 1940s the major research directions: the predominance of Oriental cults in Roman Dacia, the syncretism and rapid Romanization of both local deities and the indigenous population, and the late diffusion of Christianity, regarded as a foundation of Daco-Roman continuity. The first generation of Cluj archaeologists and epigraphists (C. Daicoviciu, O. Floca, M. Macrea, I. I. Russu) inherited the legacy of late-19th-century Hungarian scholarship and consolidated V. Pârvan’s program. Subsequent generations (1960s-1990s) continued to pursue the same themes – Oriental cults, the persistence of indigenous beliefs, and early Christianity – though with shifting emphases shaped by ideological context. Methodologically, research remained largely archaeological and epigraphic, rarely moving beyond a positivist level, while interpretation was dominated by the German paradigm of Roman religion as a cold, ritualized system, contrasted with the more appealing Oriental cults. Overall, the study of religion in Roman Dacia was subordinated to the Daco-Romanist program, seeking to explain both Romanization and the continuity of the local population.