Splendor and Power in the Age of Migrations / The History of Romania in One Object

With these truly magnificent gold ornaments, we take you to the tumultuous world of the 5th century A.D., when the migrations of the Germanic and other Eastern tribes reached its peak, bringing about abrupt changes in lifestyles and mores and creating new centers of power in the former possessions of the Roman Empire. These exquisite objects were found in a Germanic tomb at Florești, in Transylvania, and belonged to a young aristocratic woman, whose world of privilege and pomp they recreate and reveal. Text and video presentation by Alpár Dobos, archaeologist and curator at the National Museum of Transylvanian History in Cluj-Napoca. Film concept by Geanina Simion and Dragoș Popa.

Watch and read on our FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE and WEBSITE from Monday, November 23, 2 p.m. EDT (or anytime later).

Alpár Dobos has been working as an archaeologist and curator at the National Museum of Transylvanian History Cluj-Napoca since 2019. He was born in 1983 in Miercurea Ciuc and got his bachelor’s (2005) and master’s (2006) degrees in archaeology and classical studies at the Babeş-Bolyai University Cluj Napoca. He graduated the doctoral school of history at the Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, Hungary, defending his PhD thesis in 2018. Since the early years of his career he has been interested in the archaeology of the Migration Period and Early Middle Ages on the territory of Transylvania. The main focus of his research, also the topic of his PhD thesis is related to the funerary archaeology of the 5th–7th centuries AD in Transylvania. He wrote several studies about the Hunnic, Gepidic and Avar Age material culture. He has a vast experience in field archaeology and field school teaching, especially on Roman Age sites. Since 2010 he has been teaching Migration Age archaeology at the Babeş-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca.

Our online series THE HISTORY OF ROMANIA IN ONE OBJECT, developed in partnership with some of the most important history museums in the country, evokes decisive epochs in Romania's past starting from artifacts or vestiges with powerful symbolic, representative value.