e-Perimetron, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2013 [37-55] www.e-perimetron.org | ISSN 1790-3769 [37] Florin Fodorean * , Ioan Fodorean, Ciprian Moldovan ** Recreating the landscape of the former Roman Dacia using modern 19 th century cartography, digital data and GIS Keywords: Roman Dacia; landscape; fortresses; roads; limes. Summary: In the last 22 years, the attempts of the central institutions to create, use and update a national database with all the archaeological sites of Roman Dacia have failed. In this paper, we will use digital data, former maps from the 19 th century, archaeological in- formation, and aerial vertical photographs, to reconstruct several elements of the land- scape of the Roman Dacia. In lack of a national archaeological repertory and topographic researches using aerial photography, the reconstruction of the Dacian landscape is still to- day a difficult task to achieve. Our purpose is to discover, explain and map the spatial pat- terns using archaeological data, digital cartography and GIS. Premises In the last 22 years, the attempts of the central institutions to create, use and update a national da- tabase with all the archaeological sites of Roman Dacia have failed. All these data are available online 1 . The reasons of the failure mentioned above are: 1. most of the archaeological data used were actually copied for older sources (the archaeological repertories of several counties); 2. the databases contain only extremely general information about each site. This leads to another prob- lem: the location of a large number of these sites is a hard task, because of the inexact topographic data provided; 3. the lack of new methods to discover, evaluate and map new archaeological sites (the study of older maps, the use of aerial archaeology). Compared to other programs developed in Europe (we would like to mention the National Mapping Program developed in Great Britain, with excellent results 2 In this paper, we will use digital data, former maps from the 19 th century, archaeological infor- mation, and aerial vertical photographs, to reconstruct several elements of the landscape of the former province Roman Dacia, including fortresses, roads and watch-towers. ), the attempts made in Romania are, until now, useless, in lack of the use of new methods. One of these methods is the analysis of each archaeological region, the creation of a real GIS database, the mapping of the sites using digital methods. The topography and the landscape of Roman Dacia In the 19 th century there were major improvements in mapping within Europe. They took three forms. First, the publication of cadastral maps, made for taxation of administrative purposes, was a big step. The second major development was the growing importance of large-scale military surveys. The third form is the representation, within these maps, of elements which formed the Roman landscape. Anyone who studied the modern cartography noticed an ’appetite’ to map all * Babeş-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Romania [fodorean_f@yahoo.com] ** Babeş-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Romania [cmoldovan@geografie.ubbcluj.ro] 1 See at http://www.cimec.ro/Arheologie.html (e-Patrimoniu. Institutul de memorie culturală, cIMeC.ro). 2 http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/professional/research/landscapes-and-areas/national-mapping-programme.