Istvánovits Eszter (szerk.): A nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum Évkönyve 55. (Nyíregyháza, 2013)
A 2010. október 11-14. között Nyíregyházán és Szatmárnémetiben megtartott Vándorló és letelepült barbárok a kárpáti régióban és a szomszédos területeken (I-V. század) Új leletek, új értelmezések című nemzetközi régészeti konferencia anyagai - Sorin Bulzan: Császárkori (II-III. századi) telep a Berettyó völgyében Margine/Széltalló, "Valea Tániei-Tarina+ (Bihar megye, Románia)
Ivan Bugarski — Vujadin Ivanisevic The historical data on Margum are not numerous, the epigraphic ones having been compiled in a monograph by Miroslava Mirkovic (1986.). The first descriptions of the topography of Margum came from Count Marsigli, and Felix Kanitz visited the site in the late-19th century. The first excavations were conducted by Miloje Vasié, who researched a Late Bronze Age cemetery in 1909. Three campaigns were organised by Borde Mano-Zisi and Rastislav Marie in the late-1940s, when pre-Roman, Roman and Medieval settlements were recorded. Systematic research lasted until 1954, but its results were not published fully (Mano-Zisi et al. 1950., Mark: 1951.). Then in 1989 and 1990 rescue excavations were organised in the course of hydro-regulatory works. The results were published in several instances, related to the Roman and Migration Periods (Jovanovic-Cunjak 1994., Cunjak 1992., Cunjak 1996.). The excavations were also conducted in 2005, but only the Medieval cultural layers were examined. Apart from the large scale excavations, in 2011 series of aerial photographs were taken and LiDAR scanning of the terrain was conducted within the scope of the ArchaeoLandscapes Europe Project (Ivanisevic-Bugarski 2012.). In the same year a geomagnetic survey of Margum was performed too (Rummel et al. 2012.). The most important find from the 1940s campaigns is a large Roman building with a hypocaust system, wall-frescoes and mosaic floors, dated to the first half of the 3rd century and described as thermae in a more recent article (Jovanovic-Cunjak 1994. 107). The building was seemingly abandoned in the course of the 4th century. In a superposed layer, objects from the 4th and 5th century have been found, among them crossbow and cicada brooches together with a bronze appliqué with a cross-like ending dated to the 5th century. Burnished grey pottery came from the same layer and also from the pits dug into the floor of a Late Roman building, where it was found together with fragments of glazed pottery (Mano-Zisi et al. 1950. 144-153, 155-156, Fig. 5, Fig. 16, Fig. 29: 11-12). Some 40 years later, about 100 m to the east of the mentioned building, also near the old Morava river-bed, another spacious thermae building was explored. It has been suggested that the thermae ended in fire, which was linked to the Hunnic raid. After the mid-5,h century, the thermae building was not put to use again (Cunjak 1996.). For our topic, excavations of the Margum cemeteries from the same campaigns are far more important. In an area of ca. 100 m2 large surface, a total of 58 graves were explored. They come from four horizons, the oldest one representing a prehistoric cemetery of cremated burials. The graves of the Mala Kopasnica-Sase type were dated to the 2nd century AD, and after a certain period of time, there were two simple graves belonging to the mid-3rd century. By all appearances, from the same horizon comes an isolated brick-built tomb with painted walls dated to the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th century (Jovanovic-Cunjak 1994. 107-119). In the same publication ofAleksandar Jovanovic and Mladjan Cunjak, graves 1, 23, 28, 41 and 42 were dated to the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5,h century, while the possibility was left open that some of the neighbouring simple graves with no grave-goods belong to the same period. The graves in question were built of bricks, oriented west-east, with very modest grave-goods or without them at all (Jovanovic-Cunjak 1994. 119-120). One may notice that the dating of those graves was not sufficiently explained, but in the same work a late date for some graves unearthed by the thermae during the first excavations was challenged (Mano-Zisi et al. 1950. 159-163, cf. Dimitrijevic et al. 1962. 119). It is notable that they came from the same Late Roman horizon. When it comes to the small finds from those graves, Mihailo Milinkovic (1998. 209) rightfully refrained from the ethnic interpretation of the earring cast in bronze with a polyhedric ending (Fig. 2: 2). Matching examples have been well studied, coming from wide areas stretching from Dalmatia and the Danube region up to the Crimea and the Don region. They were used for long periods (cf. Ivanisevic et al. 2006. 29, Fig. 14: 10-16). From one of the Margum graves we have a pair of 468
