Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 30/1. (2010)
Articles
136 L. Vass Fig. 5. Chronology of finds. Nevertheless we tried to separate the analyzed material into chronological sequences to observe if there is any kind of concentration of small finds in any of the above mentioned periods (Fig. 5). The result proved our belief that in the case of Dacia these chronological sequences have no importance in clarifying the situation. The majority of the studied objects are generally dated to the 2nd-3rd century that indicates that the archaeological contexts were unknown, or there was no dating element that would have put the archaeological context in chronological sequence. This means that these objects could have belonged with equal chances to both centuries. The presence of objects dated to the 2nd century is not so considerable comparing to the 3rd century where a bigger amount of objects belonged to. The predominance of objects from the 3rd century reflects rather the general tendency of reconstruction works in the Roman forts42 and its better research than the right of soldier to marry. We can observe that the majority of the finds from the 2nd century are hairpins that have the biggest period of usage among the other categories, so their dating on the basis of typology is impossible. The situation of the brooches is quite different; they are dated usually by typology43 and not on the basis of their archaeological contexts. This leads to the situation where the context is dated through the object. The danger of these typological chronologies is that it excludes the very simple fact that even a brooch affected strongly by the changing fashion trends, could have had a longer usage time. Case of study: the auxiliary fort from Buciumi As I already mentioned, most auxiliary forts from Dacia suffer from poor documentation which, in some case, are almost inexistent. Under these conditions it is very hard to follow the distribution pattern of small finds within a fort and to gain relevant pieces of information. From the published reports I chose the auxiliary fort from Buciumi because only this fort allowed establishing some major observations concerning the subject of this paper. It also should be 42 Chirilä et al. 1972, 14-32 (Buciumi); Isac 2003 (Cä$eiu). 43 It is the case of the brooches coming from Räcari (Bondoc-Gudea 2009, 267, nr. 1029, 271, nr.1053, 1056), or of those from Gherla (Protase et al. 2008, 72, nr. 1, 3).
