Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 23. 1984-1985 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1987)
Tanulmányok – Abhandlungen - Biró Mária, T.: Gorsium bone carvings. p. 25–63.
it necessary to manufacture such large-sized hairpins. They are thick and at least 15—20 cm long. The two illustrations show such hairstyle (PL 1—2). The hair-pin of Gorsium is the most common type of acus crinalis widely distributed in the provinces. Even the remaining broken specimen is 15 cm long, its top is cypress cone-shaped with three engraved circles on its collar, the end of the intact specimens is globular. The fashion started during the Flauii and remained popular in the Traian, Hadrian era throughout the Empire. (They appear in Slovenia at the turn of the 1—2nd century) (Dular 1979,279). In the collection of the National Museum, there are several pieces of acus crinalis but, unfortunately, of unknown sites. Formerly they were supposed to be distaffs, this supposition is however disproved by the curved specimen from Sopron which follows the shape of the head (Sopron inv. nr. 55.109 195 unpublished). This type is known to us from the early Roman cemetery of Rumi Street in Savaria, consequently there is a proof for an early appesrance in Pannónia as well (Szombathely inv. nr. 54. 8. 3. 9. unpublished). For a long time literature and even more often museum inventories described such large-sized hairpins and the likewise large-sized sticks, though fully decorated on the whole surface, as distaff or spindle. A distaff is a rod of more than half a meter but spindles are also, at least, 30 cm long. Besides the acus crinalis the fragment of such a stick — turned and decorated with astragal motives, —can also be found on the site of the vicus (Fig. 21a). The lathe-turned object with a cross-section of a double cone resembling, at first sight, rather a bead, is on the basis of the fracture the fragment of such a small rod of which several can be found in the collection of the National Museum (Fig. 21b) (MNM. inv. nr. 10. 1951. 122.). If this rod was a fusus made of bone and the bone disc at the lower end was the verticulus why should such trouble be taken to give it an elaborate finish when the whole length of the rod would be covered by yarn? Could the thin bone disc give the initial impetus needed at spinning? The average length of these sticks is 20 cm. Although the possibility of such use cannot categorically be disproved, I wish to describe here my other conceptions. Similar astragal decorated sticks, though Fig. 4. Taking out ointment with the help of a stick ringed neck Fig. 5. The representation of crepundia on a child's statue made of metal, are to be found together in a set for coscosmetics, included among a spatula, a depilator and other instruments of uncertain purpose (CAGNAT —CHAPOT 1920, 389, fig. 589). The Etruscan mirror at the Hermitage (Leningrad) pictures a winged figure using such an implement to take ointment out of a scent bottle (PI. 3). Maybe, the round, movable disc is needed to stop the scent running along the stick and hand. My theory seems to be proved by the fact that Judit Topái found in a cremation grave dating from the end of the first century, two similar sticks beside a paint mixing palette and a separate bone disc. No fragments of a cosmetics box belonged to the disc. The disc was probably part of the sticks.( 2 ) If the sticks decorated with astragal motives are, in fact, for applying ointment and as such a part of cosmetics, our small stick fragment from Gorsium is a further proof of Roman fashion and hygienic habits gaining ground in the early period of the settlement. The use of acus crinalis could only become fashionable at a place where women did not cover their hair with a veil or shawl and the decorative hair pin could be fully displayed. Building XI. (Figs. Ь4—41) On the site of the area sacra in building IX, below the frescoes, there was a bone necklace of several pieces and to this unit must have belonged those bone carvings which turned up in the surrounding sections, partly outside the wall, but at the same level; namely, parts of a counting set and three pins. Parts of the necklace are a snake-head shaped carving, three perforated teeth, two plaques one rectangular, the other oval decorated with concentric circles and two smooth beads (35, 39, 31, 36, 37, 40). The pair of the oval carving, which I have already mentioned when treating the finds at the ulcus in detail, is shaped in the same way only the fastening is worked differently. (2) J u d i t T о p à Г s excavation material, before publication. 28
