IDEOLOGY AND POLITICS IN RESEARCHING: THE (E)NEOLITHIC IN ROMANIA

In the present article I intend to point out some aspects of the archaeological practice in communist and post-communist Romania which I think deserve more attention than has been paid to them so far, taking as a case study the research on the (E)Neolithic period. The first part of the paper deals with the dominant types of discourse, their proponents and their beneficiaries; in other words, the policy pursued by the academic world, and the power relationships within the discipline. The second part discusses the relationships between the archaeologists' approach and the socio-political context, and their consequences.