 So the First World War and the Union of 1918 are two events which completely reshaped the kingdom of Romania at the beginning of the 20th century, bringing major political, economic, social, and cultural changes. The territory and population of the Romanian kingdom doubled as a result of unification with the provinces of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transylvania, which before the war belonged to different empires. So after the war, Romanians found themselves in the process of defining their own identity within the newly formed Greater Romania. So in the years that followed, Romanian authorities aimed at maintaining the recently gained territories and defending them against Hungarian and Russian revisionism. They also wished to integrate the large number of ethnic minorities and finish the legislative, administrative, economic unification of the provinces. So in order to achieve all these solidarity and unity were seen as key factories and all this created the fertile ground for the flourishing of a nationalist discourse that emphasized Romanian singularity in history. And this discourse, of course, also impacted archeological research and museum practices of the time. So in this paper, I will explore the role of archeological research, museums, and collections in the construction of the Romanian nation and identity in interwar Romania from 1918 to 1939. The years between the two world wars coincide with the professionalization, institutionalization, and internationalization of Romanian archeology. And they mostly overlap with the activity of Vasile Purvan, who is considered to be the founder of modern archeology in Romania. Now, Vasile Purvan, he started out as a medievalist, but his professor soon traced him the mission to reinvigorate archeology in the field of ancient history in Romania. And he studied a lot in Germany and when he came back to Romania, his career advanced extremely rapidly. So he became a professor, a full professor at the University of Bucharest, only at the age of 27. And he also became the director of the National Museum of Antiquities. He also held several other important positions. At that time, when Vasile Purvan was activating, everything needed to be organized in Romanian archeology. And he proved to be the most suitable and competent person for this work. So he reorganized the ancient history and the pog epigraphy seminary at the University of Bucharest. He also reorganized the National Museum of Antiquities, which in 1956 after the Second World War became the Vasile Purvan Institute of Archeology, one of the main institutions in today's Romania devoted to archeological research. He also opened and contributed to the opening of small local regional museums across Romania, which functioned as branches and sections of the National Museum of Antiquities. And he also initiated the massive campaign of systematic archeological excavations in the country, because he believed that the only way that only archeology could prove the thousand-year long continuity of Romanians on the territory of Greater Romania. So all the excavated materials went to the National Museum of Antiquities and later on to the smaller museum. And here they were organized, exhibited, and researched by Purvan's pupils and collaborators following his training, his ideas, and scientific agenda. And these excavations were one of the main ways of enriching the collections of these museums in the inter-war period. These archeological sites, which were excavated by Vasile Purvan were also the training grounds for his students. And he invested a lot of time in their education as the preparation of a new generation of specialists was one of his main concerns. And here you can see him with the members of the Romanian School in Rome, visiting Pompeii in 1926, and most of them were his pupils. So in this slide you can see several important archeologists of the inter-war period and the years that followed the Second World War. I want to go into details concerning their biographies. The main idea is that the leading Romanian archeologists and historians in the inter-war period and the years that followed the Second World War were Purvan's pupils. I'm sorry. It seems that his vision was to create a strong and stable team of young professional archeologists with whom he could work for legitimizing the greater Romania by proving the ancientness of Romania. And his strategy was to train young people at the university and the field on excavations to send them abroad to study, especially in Germany. And when they came back, he hired them at the National Museum of Antiquities which most of the time was the starting point of their careers. And some of them say that the National Museum of Antiquities others then continued their careers in universities. And yes, and wherever they went, they continued and Purvan's agenda and they implemented his vision, not only in scientific matters, but also in general organizational and administrative aspects. In his research, Purvan focused on bringing archeological evidence to the antiquity and continuity of Romanians on the territory of Greater Romania as well as on establishing the significance of ancient history of the ancient history of Romania in southeastern Europe and world history. Prehistoric archeology was not among his main research interests, but through his work he laid the foundation for his development. And he encouraged and supported his students and collaborators to pursue their interest in prehistoric archeology. And this was still a field that was, that started to especially develop in the interwar period. And it is in the interwar period that prehistoric archeology became a distinct subdiscipline within archeology in Romania. So the sort of like exception of prehistory as a subdiscipline was also the result of the work of Vasile Purvan with one of his main collaborators, Yunandria Shescu, who was actually the prehistorian in Vasile Purvan's team and one of his main successors as he followed Vasile Purvan in leading the National Museum of Antiquities. And Yunandria Shescu was delegated by Purvan several times to go to different provinces of Romania and to found smaller local museums and to research their archeological collections. He also excavated a large number of prehistoric sites and he trained Purvan's pupils in prehistoric archeology excavation and in order to prepare them to then undertake their own excavations. So as mentioned before, at the end of the First World War and the Union of 1918 came along with a significant enlargement of the territory of Romania. And this meant that archeologists, Romanian archeologists had now access to the archeological sites of the newly incorporated provinces. And one of these provinces, Transylvania, was of particular interest for Romanian archeologists and historians because this was the place where several sites considered to be crucial for Romanian history were located. Until 1918, when Transylvania belonged to Austria-Hungary, Transylvania was dominated, a research in Transylvania was dominated by Hungarian scholars. After the war they were marginalized and many of them had to leave the country and they were replaced by Romanian professionals in the academia as well as in the scientific and cultural institutions of this region. And the research agenda of these specialists was in accordance with the objectives of the archeological school of Vasile Purvan in Bucharest where most of them received their education and training. So their research now in this newly acquired province focused on ancient Asia and the continuity of Latinized populations in Transylvania. Excavations were, therefore excavations were conducted mainly in sites which were relevant for the history of Asia or their Roman period. And the archeological excavations were carried out with funding from the commission for historical monuments. And what's interesting is that these funds were first allocated to the National Museum of Antiquities which were headed by Vasile Purvan who then distributed the funds among other researchers and institutions depending on the importance and needs of each site. So which was the political context in which all of these were happening. So in Austria-Hungary before the first world war Romanians living in Transylvania were considered to be inferior to the other three nations that inhabited the same province which were the Hungarians, the Sakes and the Saxons. Romanians wished for emancipation and equal rights and starting with the Enlightenment moving the 18th century Transylvania Romanians argued that they were the pure descendants of the Romans. So they forged themselves a glorious past and noble origins which could offer them legitimacy in requesting rights. However, starting with the second half of the 19th century Romanians began to discover their ancient ancestry. So roots started to become more important than noble origins. Hungarians, however, counter argued Romanians with the theories of Austrian historian Robert Frössler among others, which were extremely popular at the time. Frössler actually argued that Romanians formed as a people south of the Danube and migrated north of the river in the 13th century after the arrival of the Hungarian tribes in Transylvania in the 9th and 10th centuries. So Frössler's ideas confer legitimacy to the Hungarian administration as well as to the process of hungarization that took place in Transylvania. So these were the historical debates in Transylvanian that Transylvanian Romanians and Hungarians brought along in the newly created Greater Romania and that needed to be answered also through archaeology. So this is the reason why the Romanian archaeological and historical publications of the interwar period generally focused on emphasizing the Romanian ancient Dacian roots and their glorious Dacian past. And Dacians were seen by Vassila Purvan as a numerous and strong people. The founders of a remarkable civilization and the only Tracian tribe which created the state. And for Purvan, the image of ancient Dacia was equivalent with the newly created Greater Romania. So his descriptions of Dacia are ideal projections of Greater Romania. He suggests that after the First World War and the Union of 1918, Romanians had the favorable contacts and all the necessary ingredients such as ancient roots, magnificent pasts and legitimacy to repeat history and build a state that had the chances to become as prosperous, stable and flourishing as its ancient version. So at ancient Dacia and Greater Romania were the same not only for Vassila Purvan but also for one of his main collaborators, Yunandria Shepu, who was actually the first prehistorian of his team. So for Andrija Shepu, Dacia appeared to be an obvious continuation of several prehistoric civilizations that flourished on the territory of Romania during the Neolithic and Copper Age. And as Dacia was equivalent of Greater Romania, Romanians now automatically became not only the descendants of Dacians but also flourishing prehistoric civilizations. And Andrija Shepu believed that there were direct links between the prehistoric and contemporary peoples that inhabited the same land but at different times in history. And this is how prehistory and he believed that prehistoric archeology had a major role in bringing arguments to this activists and the ethnicity was to be established with the help of typology, stratigraphy and chronology. So now I got to the conversion. So as I mentioned before, in the introvert Romania, prehistoric archeology aimed to bring evidence of the ancientness of Romanian as well as to establish the significance of the country's prehistory in the context of world and southeastern European history. The agenda of prehistoric archeology centered on discovering the ancientness of Romanian nation and researching the Dacian past as well as on establishing the relevance of the states. Sorry, I always said that. So all this was part of a larger movement which meant to give legitimacy to the existence of the newly created Greater Romania. And Vasile Purvan was one of the main intellectuals who engaged in this movement and they there were period and he contributed to this great plan through archeology. In his aim to prove the ancientness of Romanians, he created a strategy in he held key positions as a director of the National Museum of Antiquities and Professor at the University of Bucharest. And these allowed him to have an overall overview of the archeological heritage of the country and to control it. So and the other main point in his strategy was to educate and train and engage young and passionate professionals in his dream. And then he sent them out to excavate working museums and teaching universities. And these are the people who continued his legacy. Purvan contributed to the creation of new museums which in darker collection through the numerous archeological excavations that he organized. And the excavated materials were then organized, researched and published in these museums by people who have been directly or indirectly formed by him. So as a general conclusion, we can say that the agendas behind collecting, researching and exhibiting archeological objects and collections in Romania between the two world wars were generally following the agenda of Vasile Purvan who was of course an actor and part of a national movement in inter-war Romania. Thank you very much.