Dinu Adameșteanu

[2] Adameșteanu took part in his first excavations in 1935 on the Black Sea, on the site of Istria, a Greek colony of Miletus, under the direction of Scarlat Lambrino, a noted Romanian epigrapher and historian, university professor and corresponding member of the Romanian Academy, who directed the excavations at Istria from 1928 until 1940[3] and was director of the National Museum of Antiquities of Bucharest (1938–1940).

[4] Because of the absence of archaeological remains on the surface, his work even at this time, took advantage of aerial photography to identify remains, a method which he would later apply in Italy and in campaigns conducted between 1959 and 1960 in Afghanistan, Israel (Caesarea Maritima) and other parts of the Middle East with the Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente (Is.M.E.O, now the Is.I.A.O - Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente).

At the latter site, a series of soundages allowed them to identify and then bring to light the city's fortifications, with twenty-metre thick walls on the hill of San Mauro which culminated in the south with the "Syracusan Gate," mentioned by Polybius, which was also excavated at this time.

In Sicily, at the invitation of Piero Griffo, superintendent of Agrigento, Adameșteanu directed the excavation of Butera and Gela, where he collaborated closely with Pietro Orlandini, between 1951 and 1961, advancing research of ancient Sicilian fortifications in particular.

In this period, Adameșteanu adopted a theme which had already been advocated passionately by Vasile Pârvan, who had emphasised the importance of interaction between Greek colonists and indigenous populations in his Getica; this would subsequently become a major focus of historical and archaeological research[1] For Dinu Adameșteanu, too, it has been the priviliged [sic] focus of research, constantly addressed at all moments in his work, in the Black Sea, in Sicily, in Basilicata.

And it was perhaps this range of experience which allowed him to intuit and propose (notably anticipating later studies) the existence of forms of cohabitation between Greek and indigenous groups, distinct from the stereotypical colonial model.He published the results of his research in Sicily, together with Orlandini, in three volumes dedicated to the fortifications of Gela and to the ancient territory of the city, in the Accademia dei Lincei's Notizie degli Scavi, and in other journals, including Revue Archeologique, Archeologia Classica, and Bollettino d'Arte.

His attentive and patient comparison between surface and aerial photographic evidence allowed him to identify "a large number of ancient sites, some known only through literary sources and some otherwise entirely unknown.

[1][5] He worked to promote the potential offered by the integration of aerial photography into traditional archaeological research, through demonstrations in Italy and abroad.

[7] On 20 May 2005, the Museo archeologico nazionale della Basilicata [it] in the Palazzo Loffredo [it] in Potenza, was officially opened and named "Dinu Adameșteanu" in his honour.