Iancu Alina
Alina Iancu is a classical archaeologist at the National Institute of Heritage of Romania. She studied History and Archaeology at the University of Bucharest and has benefited from a series of international research opportunities, including grants and short-term scientific missions in Warsaw and Athens, a postdoctoral programme at the University of Graz, and study visits at the Centre for Textile Research (CTR), Denmark.
She holds a PhD from the University of Bucharest (2023), where her doctoral research focused on the role of ancient clay spools in textile production in the Peloponnese, Greece, highlighting their significance within ancient craft practices (https://www.oxbowbooks.com/9798888570647/textile-production-in-the-ancient-central-peloponnese/).
Her primary research interests lie in ancient textile production in the Aegean and Pontic regions, with a particular emphasis on weaving and spinning technologies. Her work integrates the analysis of textile tools and fragments with written and iconographic sources, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of textile economies and craft organisation in antiquity.
Since 2023, she has served as co-leader of the Digital Atlas of European Textile Heritage (https://atlas.euroweb.uw.edu.pl/), developed within the framework of the EuroWeb initiative. She was also an active member of the CA 19131 EuroWeb COST Action, where she contributed to the development of digital research infrastructures for textile heritage.
At the National Institute of Heritage in Bucharest, within the Department of Archaeological and Museum Documentation, she has held a permanent position since 2019. Her work focuses on the administration and development of national archaeological heritage databases, as well as on the implementation of digital tools, including the Romanian Cultural Heritage MapServer (https://map.cimec.ro/Mapserver/).
In addition to her institutional work, she participates in archaeological fieldwork in mainland Greece and on the western coast of the Black Sea (Romania), at sites such as Olympia, Olynthus, and Istros, where she focuses on the study of textile tool assemblages.
She is also the initiator of the Textile Records project and co-editor of the resulting volume (https://www.oxbowbooks.com/9798888572139/textile-records/), contributing to the advancement of textile studies through interdisciplinary collaboration and data-driven research approaches. The project’s flagship resource is the Textile Tools Record Sheet—a free, downloadable template that enables quick and consistent recording by field archaeologists, curators, and conservators, promoting accurate publication and comparative studies (included both in the Textile Records volume and on the ARTEX website: https://artextiles.org/en/Textile%20Records%20Project).
