Poiana Slatinei archaeological site and salt spring, Lunca

Poiana Slatinei lies near the village of Lunca, Vânători-Neamț commune, about 6 km north-west of Târgu Neamț, on the eastern slope of the Pleșu ridge, inside the Vânători-Neamț Natural Park. The area belongs to the salt-bearing zone of the Moldavian Subcarpathians, with many salt springs known locally as slatine. The brine of the Poiana Slatinei spring contains about 160 g/l of salt, roughly six times the concentration of sea water. The site was discovered in the early 1980s by history teacher Ilie Untaru, and excavations began in 1984 under archaeologist Gheorghe Dumitroaia of the Piatra Neamț museum, later joined by foreign prehistorians including O. Weller, A. Harding and J. Chapman. Beside the spring, the remains of hearths and fragments of the pots used to boil brine built up a mound of about 60 x 25 m and almost 3 m high. Radiocarbon dates place the start of salt production between 6050 and 5500 BC, in the Starčevo-Criș culture, which makes Poiana Slatinei the oldest known salt-production site in European prehistory. The spring continued to be used later: the site contains layers of the Linear Pottery culture, the Precucuteni and Cucuteni cultures, the Bronze Age (Costișa and Noua cultures), the Hallstatt period and the Middle Ages, when a 5.25 m deep wood-lined shaft for brine was dug. Local people still use the spring today. Finds from the site are displayed at the History and Ethnography Museum in Târgu Neamț. The archaeological site at Lunca, "Poiana Slatinii" point, is a listed historic monument (LMI code NT-I-s-B-10515, RAN code 125034.01). Archaeologist Vasile Diaconu of the Neamț National Museum Complex warns that the continued exploitation of the spring exposes both the spring and the adjacent site to damage and pollution.