Recent archaeological researches in the Vârghiș Gorges karst area (Eastern Carpathians, Romania). A synthesis of the 2014–2020 campaigns

The Vârghiș Gorges karst system (Perșani Mountains, Eastern Carpathians) constituted a point of interest for speleologists, paleontologists and archaeologists since the second half of the 19th century. Their efforts succeeded in highlighting the notable archaeological potential of the area, although the actual research results were not always thoroughly reported. Since 2014, our team reunited specialists from 10 different institutions and various fields of research and initiated archaeological excavations, coupled with achaeozoological, sedimentological and chronometric investigations, in several caves within the Vârghiș Gorges. As the paper below will show, although the results obtained so far are definitively informative, further investigation are clearly needed, in order to accurately clarify aspects pertaining to the intricate cultural and chronological framework.