Archaeology in Glina, near Bucharest

Archaeologists are interested in the invisible layers that hold evidence of past civilizations.

Ion Puican, 24.01.2026, 14:00

Under the visible layer of today’s Bucharest and the capital’s surroundings lie much older traces of human habitation, which predate the emergence of the modern city by thousands of years. Archaeologists are interested in these invisible layers, which preserve evidence of extinct civilizations, capable of giving us an essential perspective on the beginnings of human life in this area.

Vasile Opriș, head of the Bucharest City Museum’s History Section tells us more about it:

Vasile Opriș: “Around Bucharest there are several layers lying under garbage in certain areas, under grass, mud or in other areas. What interests us, as archaeologists, and me in particular are those layers that also contain traces of human civilizations that were once here and about which we no longer know much. If we discover them and bring them to light, we will surely find out what was happening in this area, at a time when the city was not actually a city, when we did not have blocks of flats, nor the agglomerations and congestion that we know today. I believe that these beginnings are very good for introspection in the increasingly hectic world of today. So, following in the footsteps of archaeologists who already had this vision almost a century ago and tried to bring to light what was in Bucharest or in the vicinity, before this city existed, I started a documentary work on some prehistoric settlements that date back approximately 7,000 years. A period difficult to comprehend for anyone, including myself, in spite of being familiar with such scales of history. 7,000 years means a lot on a human scale. As an idea, Bucharest, as we know it today, was first mentioned in documents 500 years ago. If we add another 6,500 we are getting close to the period we are talking about now.”

The archaeological research in Glina targets prehistoric settlements that are approximately 7,000 years old, known as “tells”. Some of these sites have been partially researched in the past, but were later abandoned and are today in danger due to urban expansion. Several cultural and academic institutions have started a school-site, combining classical archaeological excavation with modern methods such as drone scanning, geophysical surveys and lab tests. Vasile Opriș explains:

Vasile Opriș: “These sites, as I was saying, are already known to a certain extent. Some of the items have been researched and some of their stories have been published, are in deposits or even in some exhibitions, but they have not been researched in recent years, they have even been abandoned and poorly preserved. And, in addition, they are in imminent danger of destruction due to the accelerated expansion of the city. So we set out to assess them and try to get some more information, especially since fortunately 21st Century archaeology benefits from tools and methods that are much superior to what could be done 50-100 years ago. And in order to see what we can do and have a concrete approach, this year we started work at a site southeast of Bucharest, between the villages of Glina and Bălăceanca, a place that everyone has heard not exactly positive things about, but I think this is precisely what makes the site stand out even more. It is a mound, as I said, partly man-made. The settlements that we study are called “tells”. As I said, there are successive layers there, formed by human habitation, superimposed over about 3-4 meters. The Bucharest City Museum, jointly with the University of Bucharest, the National Museum of History of Romania and the Vasile Pârvan Institute of Archaeology, are four institutions with which we started this endeavour. I am the scientific manager, and we also started a school-site there, as we call it, because it is also open to the students of the University of Bucharest. Another goal of these efforts is to protect and preserve what we have for future generations. But we also included classical archaeological digging, because this is what gives you the most results. We are also interested in collecting samples, especially since now we also have access to a lot of laboratory tests that can bring you a lot of information about those people: about what they ate and where they got their food, DNA tests to see where they had come from, who they were related to, what part of the world these people had come from or how long they had been here and how they developed. This was one the first Neolithic cultures in this part of ​​Romania. After that, in the early Bronze Age, that is about 5000-4500 years ago, there came a population that is quite mysterious to us now, and this is one of the reasons we started digging here. It dates back to the early Bronze Age, and this culture took its name from this very settlement. It is called the Glina culture, about which few things are known today.”

The goal of this archaeological project in Glina is not only to recover the past, but also to protect it for future generations. What does the archaeologist Vasile Opriș have in mind for the site near Bucharest?

Vasile Opriș: “My plan for the next 5-10 years is to create an archaeology park there. Obviously, the plan is to have these 5 years of systematic archaeological research, to collect as much data as possible, to identify contexts and even to preserve them in-situ if they are more spectacular. After that, we should find funding and run a feasibility study to create a site museum and an archaeology park there.” (EE, AMP)