Author Description

The volume is the outcome of a conference with the same title organized at Tulcea, Romania, between the 10th and the 13th of November 2017, dedicated to the memory of Professor Alexandru Vulpe. Four prestigious institutions, two from Romania (the Gavril? Simion Eco-Museum Research Institute, Tulcea and the Vasile Pârvan Institute of Archaeology, Bucharest) and two from Germany (the Institut für und Frühgeschichte und Vorderasiatische Archäologie, Heidelberg and the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Eurasien Abteilung, Berlin), with the generous support of the Mayor?s Office in Tulcea, managed to bring together over 50 scholars, most of them friends, colleagues, collaborators, students or simply acquaintances of Professor Vulpe. The intention of the organizers was to provide a suitable environment for sharing opinions and experience, and for an open and positive discussion, to recognize the current state of research on the topic, and to establish stronger connections for future collaboration in this field. Contacts among human communities from various cultural areas, the circulation of people, ideas and objects, or the identification of the main communication routes as well as their role in shaping prehistoric societies are likely to remain forever topics of intense discussion within archaeology. The relations between the Carpathian-Balkan area and the Aegean during the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age was one of the main themes of study for Alexandru Vulpe. As a supporter of the idea of Ex oriente lux, Vulpe always argued for the major role played by the Helladic civilization in the cultural development of the Carpathian Balkan area. The lectures delivered at the Tulcea conference and the papers published in the present volume highlight once again the complexity of these connections and the multitude of perspectives revealed when approaching such a theme.