Romanian carpathian landscapes and cultures

Abstract

The objective of this chapter is to examine human-landscape interactions in the mountainous region of the Romanian Carpathians. The most diversified range of landscapes in Romania are found there, comprising steep alpine ridges, rounded forested summits, planation surfaces, deep valleys, defiles and gorges, intramontane and submontane depressions. The Carpathians stretch across the central-eastern part of Europe (Mihǎilescu 1963) as the northeastern part of the Alpine-Carpathian chain of mountains, stretching from the Vienna Basin (Bratislava, Slovakia) to the Timok's Valley (Niš, Serbia). At 1600 km length and an area of 170,000 km2, the Carpathians are the largest chain of mountains in Europe. Specifically, Carpathians in Romania are 910 km long and cover 66,303 km2. This is essentially 28% of the national territory (Niculescu 1987). The Carpathians enclose the vast, hilly Transylvanian Depression as a 'corona montium' (Iordanes, sec. IV, cited by Cocean 2004-2005) (Fig. 16.1). The Subcarpathian Hills mark the border of the mountainous region to the east and south, and the Western Hills on the west. Numerous mountain passes and defiles allow ready intra-Carpathian and trans-Carpathian travel. The most important modern road along the Prahova Valley, partially correspond to the much older 'road of the table land' ('drum de plai', in Romanian), which is marked by a number of monasteries (Fig. 16.2; Ciobanu 1979). Rugged peaks up to 2544 m high (Moldoveanu Peak) occur and are surrounded by rounded highlands and forested planation surfaces. Valleys, narrow gorges and defiles cut through the highlands, and intramontane hilly depressions or lowlands are more or less extensive and offer a variety of reliefs and ecosystems. They offered and still offer activities and resources of great diversity such as hunting, fishing, gathering, forest products, alpine pasture, good arable terrains, and a variety of minerals. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010.