Part of the Apuseni Mountains and the famous Golden Quadrilateral, the Ampoi basin offered rich copper and gold/silver ores to the prehistoric communities of Transylvania starting with the Late Eneolithic/Early Bronze Age time.
Due to the extensive field surveys and excavations performed in the last twenty years, there is now a good opportunity to analyze the relations between the habitation areas and the burial ones in this area during the Early Bronze Age.
The Late Eneolithic subsistence strategies of the Coţofeni folk seem to be quite similar to the Early Bronze Age groups that followed them directly in most of the sites. The archaeo-zoological analysis from Poiana Ampoiului offers significant data for understanding the economical patterns of small communities living in the Ampoi valley during the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. Part of these patterns may explain the location of Early Bronze Age cemeteries as well as the funeral rites and rituals. The burial practices find good parallels in other Bronze Age cultures of the Carpathian-Balkan region.