GENESIS AND EVOLUTION OF THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE IN METALIFERI MOUNTAINS
CAMELIA-INA GAVRA1, RADA VARGA2
1Babeş-Bolyai University, Faculty of Geography, 400006 Cluj-Napoca, Romania, E-mail: camelia.gavra@geografie.ubbcluj.ro
2Babeş-Bolyai University, Centre for Roman Studies, 400088, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, E-mail: radavarga@gmail.com.
ABSTRACT. – Genesis and Evolution of the Cultural Landscape in Metaliferi Mountains. Analyzing the historical development of the Metaliferi Mountains area (situated in southern Apuseni Mountains, between the limits marked by Crișul Alb, Abrud, Arieș and Mureș valleys), there is a clear continuity of habitation from prehistory to the present. Archaeological artifacts and written documents prove this fact. Its impact on the landscape and culture cannot be overlooked: in a discontinuous populated area, nature has time to return to its previous forms (before human habitation), while a permanent inhabited area is constantly changing, both through human intervention and by adapting to this intervention. Behind this continuous habitation are the rich soil and subsoil resources, which have historically attracted entire communities and generated complex demographic processes. The wealth of minerals, along with the climate, conditioned the industrial profile, focusing it on extractive industry (forms adapted to different historical moments), on wood exploitation and finally on agriculture. The environment reorganization, natural forces (water) usage, the communication development (roads) are the results of the process through which man has capitalized nature. If by mid-twentieth-century the cultural landscape of the Metaliferi Mountains experienced a gradual anthropogenic modeling closely related to the advance of mining techniques, since 1948, an ideological component was added to technological modernization, which forced the industrial development of an area which would have needed economic balance and social well-defined policies. Because of this, imbalance and abuse occurred, which, without the intervention of regulating factors, threaten to lead to the irreversible destruction of the local cultural heritage.
Keywords: Metaliferi Mountains, cultural landscape, mining industry, agriculture, tourism.