Sure you can. By default, the hibernate.archive.autodetection property value is "hbm,class", meaning that the classpath will be scanned for HBM or annotated entities. Therefore, you don't have to add the mappings in the root project module. You can just add them to the submodules.
More, you should probably use persistence.xml since hibernate.cfg.xml is a legacy config. With JPA, you have to make sure that you set the following configuration property:
Code:
<exclude-unlisted-classes>false</exclude-unlisted-classes>