Gehl, Hans - Ciubotă, Viorel (szerk.): Relaţii interetnice în zona de contact româno-maghiaro-ucraineană din secolul al XVIII-lea până în prezent (Satu Mare, 1999)
Archaeology without Borders. The Barbarian Settlement of Petea-Custom
Petea mixed population. A metallurgy pliers shows the presence of craftsmen in the settlement. The picture of the settlement changed during the Marcomannic wars (160-180 A.D.) when the Przeworsk culture carriers (the Vandals) broke into the Somes Valley from the north. In this case we cannot speak of small groups of warriors but rather of a massive colonization of this territory. The ceramic material culture changed radically, a fact that undoubtedly attests the arrival of a large population. The internal structure of the settlement changed as indicated by the layout of households in a line, as a kind of street, with their annexes behind the sunken dwellings. The handmade pottery of the Przeworsk type became almost exclusive, except for a few fragments of large storage pots of Medieşu Aurit type that indicate contacts with local Dacians. It is most likely that the impact of Vandal penetrations was different from a micro-region to another. Several new elements penetrated some areas and totally changed the character of the material culture. However, in a few other areas the local Free Dacians kept a stronger influence on the material culture. The settlement of Csengersima-Petea is situated approximately 100 km far from the Dacian limes, on the main traffic route to the north of the Someş River. The archaic pottery indicates a significant presence of the Vandals but, after the period of instability caused by the Marcomannic wars, pottery is marked more and more by Dacian elements. On this background of material culture, the technology of stamped pottery came from the Roman Empire (the starting point was Porolissum) in the middle of the 3rd century A.D., which was a little surpassed by the technology of rough pottery. In this context workshops appeared at Csengersima- Petea where pottery used to be fired after the Roman pattern, forming an industrial district within the settlement. Based on the findings in this place we observed that besides the new forms of bowls, there were also new forms of pitchers, large storage vessels. Some previously hand-made pottery shapes were made then with the help of potter’s wheel. We notice a profound change in shapes, the stamped bowls being only the most spectacular and the most intensively studied part of this transformation process. The changes in the material culture of pottery were originally influenced heavily by the Roman material culture, but they continued their development independently. In the 4th century AD there was a maximum development of the stamped pottery production in the Upper Tisa Basin, while in Dacia, excepting perhaps Porolissum, the production ends in the middle of the 3rd century A.D. With the generalization of the new technology and the transformation of the material culture in the domain of pottery making, the archaic pottery gradually disappeared and thus the interference between the Free Dacians and the Germans becomes much more difficult to study in the Upper Tisa Basin. The large setdements continued their existence, often in the same locations and with no changes in architecture. All indications show that the more or less mixed Barbarian Dacians and Germanic populations have continued their existence with changes only in the pottery material culture. The setdement of Csengersima-Petea went extinct sometime in the late 4th century or early 5th century A.D., during the period of instability from the first period of migrations. We do not know yet if the housing ended at the time previously mentioned, but it is sure that the
