Stamped pottery types from the Barbaricum sites of the Pest Plain

Korom Anita

Hadak útján. A népvándorláskor fiatal kutatóinak XXIV. konferenciája. Esztergom, 2014. november 4–6. Conference of young scholars on the Migration Period. November 4–6, 2014, Esztergom

MŐT Kiadványok 3.1 (2015) 165–203

DOI 10.55722/Arpad.Kiad.2015.3.1_09

A tanulmány a pesti oldal szarmata lelőhelyeinek bepecsételt edénytípusai közül a kónikus aljú tálak kérdéskörével foglalkozik, a táltípus eredetével, datálásával, a motívumok elemzésével, felhasználva az eddig publikált párhuzamokat is. A régészeti megfigyeléseket archaeometriai vizsgálatok eredményei egészítik ki.

Kulcsszavak: Budapest, Aquincum, Üllő 5. lelőhely, szarmata, pecsételt kerámia, kónikus aljú tál, archaeometria

During the rescue excavations of the last few decades, new types of objects have been sepa-rated that reveal the local differences of the Sarmatian Barbaricum. Stamped pottery is one of them. The article focuses on the conical shape bowls which are really different from the Panno-nian ones and from the imitation of Drag. 37 vessels both in their profile and ornamentation. In my analysis I used the already published twelve sherds from Üllő and three from Pannonia, so I worked with 34 fragments altogether.

In all cases, only two motives were stamped alternately on the steep, accentuated neck of the ves-sels. The motives of the 34 sherds were classified into five main groups and the variants of each group were also identified. In the course of the analysis, I tried to find links between the fragments on the basis of colour and decoration. The examination of the profile, dimension and ornaments might help in finding the workshop and detecting chronological differences. The stamped ceramic sherds from Budapest and Üllő are very similar, but on the basis of motives local differences could be identified. The main motif of the conical bowls, which could be dated to the 3rd–4th centuries, is clearly the rosette. They were separated by the „S” ornament or—in the area of Budapest—by vertical lines. These two ornaments only appear together on the finds from Budapest in separating function.

The archaeometrical tests, in the course of which the conical shaped fragments were com-pared to the results of numerous measurements on Aquincum ceramics, testify to a raw mate-rial from Aquincum. The hypothetical manufacturing centre raises further questions. Can the products be connected to an already known Aquincum workshop or were they produced in a yet unknown workshop? On the basis of the small amount of the sherds we could assume a limited time horizon or a longer operating small workshop producing small amounts for the barbarians living within the Aquincum area.

The small number of fragments warns us to be cautious when drawing conclusions. Hope-fully, future publications will provide further contribution to the typology, dating and distribu-tion of this vessel type which can only be localized to a small area today.