Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 31/1. (2011)
Articles
Bronze Objects from the Excavation of the Tárgu Mures Franciscan Friary 321 Clothing accessories The second group of objects presented here are the clothing accessories. There are several local or regional products such as belt ornaments, buttons, pendants and buckles. Among these a square shaped ornament representing a snake surrounding a staff (Pi. 6/65) was found along with a few belt ornaments produced probably in a specialized workshop and one trefoil shaped ring brooch. The belt ornament is pin pointed at one of its edges and it was positioned at the end of the belt. It is lavishly decorated with leaves. The belt buttons have an octagonal shape with a convex middle part and with four claws on the back side. The ring brooch is rather a rare object, there are only around five similar pieces found in Transylvanian excavations. The buckle had a decoration made with incision and it follows the pattern of the late gothic buckles produced in north of Europe. The incision tries to follow the shape of letters and leaves. An interesting decoration element is a bronze pendant, its upper part is triangle shaped it ends in a hook, its lower part is square shaped and it has a small plate attached with three nails. It seems that the pendant, together with other pendants was attached to a leather belt and then hanged on someone’s cloth as decoration. The rest of the bronze pieces are simple buttons and belt buckles. Household accessories and tools The third group is composed of bronze objects used in households or in everyday life. Most of the objects from this category were identified in the building L3, that is the cellar of the early 14th century friary building, used as garbage pit after the demolition from the early 15th century. Among the most interesting identified objects was the lower part of a candle extinguisher composed of two spatula shaped sides6 and the large number of thimbles was noticeable. Eight thimbles were found and five out of eight were identified in L3. The thimbles could be connected to the large number of carved animal bone material. The carved animal bones were mainly of antler (deer) and from these beads were produced for rosaries. The thimbles could be used in the process of carving or during the string process. We have identified in the same context about six bronze needles. A separate group of the household tools are the fragments from cutlery and tableware. There were identified knives, forks and bronze made knife or spoon handles. In this article we are only going to discuss the bronze made items so we are only going to deal with the handle of knifes and probably spoons. Different types of handles with close analogies at Alba Iulia/Gyulafehérvár (Marcu-Istrate 2009, cat. no. 152, 155, 156, etc.), and a few accessories were found, such as a bronze petal from the end of a handle. The more complex pieces were produced in specialized workshops just as the casted bronze handle or we have a number of knife handles from Steyr or Nürnberg workshops imported in large number. These handles have a special cover from bronze plates combined with animal bone. The bronze plate was often decorated with vegetal ornaments. The elegant handles have a widened crown like ending (PI. 2/24). Another interesting bronze piece identified during the excavation is a bronze made fishing hook. The hook is 5.7 cm long and it has no beard at its end (Pi. 5/42). *** The bronze finds from the Tärgu Mures Franciscan friary are very important and relevant to understand the regional connections of a friary and of a middle sized market town. A number of bronze items found at the friary excavation are rather connected to the wealth and possibilities 6 The artefact has close analogies at Oradea/Nagyvárad (Rusu 2002,158, pi. LVI/i).
