Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 31/1. (2011)
Articles
NEW DATA ABOUT THE ROMAN SETTLEMENT FROM ODORHEIU SECUIESC RADU ZÄGREANU The National Museum of Eastern Carpathians, Sf. Gheorghe, RO ZSOLT NYÁRÁDI Haáz Rezső Museum, Odorheiu Secuiesc, RO The paper proposes a new approach upon the intriguing problem of the existence of a roman fort or a roman settlement at Odorheiu Secuiesc based on the new discoveries. Unfortunately all these discoveries are without any archaeological stratigraphic information and lots of material was collected in a private collection. Most of the Roman materials considered here are unpublished. Also, it has not been subjected so far to a detailed investigation. The analysis of the material shows a strong roman settlement with a rich activity somewhere between the second part of the 2nd century and in the 3rd century AD. The discussion offers an insight view into aspects related to roman civilisation: pottery production, the identification of a blacksmith centre, roman buildings and roman funerary customs. The most successful achievement of the study was chartering all the discoveries. In the same time, we tried to create a map of the area of spreading of the Roman materials in Odorheiu Secuiesc. Keywords: limes; roman fort; pottery; iron tools; thermae; coins; brooches The Eastern Limes of Dacia, known in archaeological literature since the last century, has scarcely been researched, and much of the available information comes from field researches or from accidentally discovered artefacts. Such example is the roman centre from Odorheiu Secuiesc (Hu. Székelyudvarhely), where only scarce discoveries have been found, but the exact place of the presumed roman fort is unknown; it is considered that it was under the actual walls of the medieval city (Paulovics 1944, 48). The locality, situated in the South-Eastern part of Transylvania, on the shores of the Tárnává Mare river, in the Odorhei depression after 106 AD belonged to the province Dacia, after 118-119 AD to Dacia Superior and after 168 AD to Dacia Apulensis (Piso 1993, 32, 94). The eastern border of the province was crossing here, and it was guarded by several forts: the valley of the Tárnává Micä river was guarded by the fort from Sáráteni (Székely 1961,186; Székely 1962a, 332) from here the border turned south; between the superior courses of the Tárnává Mica and the Tárnává Mare rivers was the fort of Inläceni (Gudea 1979, 152), here the border turned east, towards Odorhei. From Odorhei the border turned south again, along the valley of Homorod, guarded by the fort from Sänpaul (Ferenczi-Ferenczi 1967, 401). The roman period is poorly researched in this area. Archaeological researches have been conducted at the roman forts from Inläceni (Gudea 1979,149-275), Sänpaul (Ferenczi-Ferenczi MARISIA XXXI, p. 219-271
