(village Luncasprie, commune Dobreşti, county Bihor)
Known to the domestic and international scientific environment thanks to the spectacular discoveries made by speleologists in the early 80s of the last century, the Izbucul Topliţei de Vida cave has benefited from systematic archaeological research since 2021. The project Reconstructing spatiotemporal paleodynamics from ancient biomolecules to interconnected systems: an overview of cave sediments (PN-III-P4-ID-PCE-2020-0518; website: http://a-dna-history.iser.ro/index-ro.html) brought together specialists from various fields of research (archaeologists, biologists, geologists, speleologists, anthropologists) from prestigious institutions in Transylvania: Babeș-Bolyai University (team coordinated by Dr. Ioana Meleg), the Institute of Archeology and Art History in Cluj Napoca (dr. habil. Florin Gogâltan), the National History Museum of Transylvania (dr. Demjén Andrea) and the Oradea Crișurilor Land Museum (dr. Călin Ghemiș).
In the summer of 2022, under very special conditions regarding controlled access to the cave, the team investigated two child graves dating back to the early Bronze Age (ca. 2500-2300 BC) and traces of a habitation from the end of the Middle Neolithic (ca. .5200-5000). Given that the northern profile of the open box in this archaeological research campaign had great scientific potential, sediment samples, samples for AMS dating and fossil DNA were taken. All the evacuated sediment was transported out of the cave and washed to recover all the archaeological materials (ceramic fragments, animal and human bones, grains, small lithic pieces, etc.).
