Oituz Pass

the Road to the Danube Mouths
the Road to Moldova

Roman Province Period

The auxiliary camp at Breţcu (Covasna County) is located, like many other Roman military fortifications, in front of a pass over the Carpathian Mountains. During the existence of the Roman Province of Dacia, this support point of the Roman army, identified with the ancient name of ANGVSTIA, exercised traffic control through the Oituz pass. This camp is supposed to mark one of the base points of the road from Pannonia to the urban centers north and northwest of Pontus Euxinus. The research in the project is oriented towards the identification, analysis and evaluation of the adjacent structures of this presumed road junction from the Roman era.
From the middle of the century. III, the Oituz step loses its value of connecting node on the east-west traffic axis. We do not know for sure whether the connection with the extra-Carpathian lands was taken over at the moment by the Buzău pass. What is certain is that the circulation through the Oituzului Pass was interrupted, this being resumed either during the appearance of the Slavs in Transylvania, or even much later - as attested by the current name of the pass, which is of Turanian origin. In this context, we intend to gather, evaluate and then interpret from a historical-archaeological point of view all the traces related to the use of the Oituz pass from the period after leaving Roman Dacia until the arrival of migrants from the beginning of the second millennium of the Christian Era.
Author: A. Popa
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Aerial image by D. Ștefan