ABSTRACT

In this chapter I discuss a case study of ancient graffiti carved into the rock at the well-known archaeological site at Cetățeni, on the upper valley of Romania’s Dâmboviţa River at the southern margin of the Carpathian Mountain foothills (Figure 5.1). This settlement is mentioned as Cetățuia lui Negru Vodă (“The Black Prince’s Citadel” in Romanian) in the end of the seventeenth- century correspondence between the scholar, soldier, and virtuoso Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli and Constantine Cantacuzene, High Steward of Wallachia (Iorga 1901; Ortiz 1916; Stoye 1994).