American Academy in Rome - Fautores Abstract

THE POTTERY WORKSHOPS IN TRANSYLVANIA DURING THE LATE ROMAN AND EARLY MIGRATION PERIODS (4TH-5TH CENTURIES AD)

Coriolan Opreanu

Transylvania, the core of the former Roman province of Dacia, ceased to belong to the Roman Empire after AD 271, when emperor Aurelianus withdrew the army and the administration to the south of the Danube.

Little is known at the moment about the organization of society and the economic structures in the next century after this political event. As the Roman towns no longer existed, rural settlements became more important production centers. Several rural sites dated generally to the 4th-5th centuries AD were partially uncovered by the archaeological excavations carried out in Transylvania. Many pottery workshops were identified. That means that there was still a great demand for good quality pottery. Among the best known sites having pottery workshops in this period are: Cluj-Manastur (Cluj county), Mugeni (Harghita county), Sighisoara-Dealul Viilor (Mures county), Bratei (Sibiu county), Suceag (Cluj county), Oradea (Bihor county). All these settlements had pottery kilns of well known Late Iron Age-Roman type, with two chambers. The technological standards of Roman period production were still working. The wheel-made pottery was of several categories. The fine, gray color tableware with polished surface or polished ornaments exists at every site. It is a category inspired by the Late Roman pottery produced on the Late Roman frontier centers from Pannonia, for example. There is also the category of rough, sandy fabric, kitchen pottery also of Roman provincial type and bad quality hand-made pottery. Very interesting was the production of the stamped pottery, characteristic for Dacia and for the barbarian settlements in north east Hungary and eastern Slovakia in the 2nd-4th centuries AD.

The peak of the pottery workshops production of good quality wares of Late Roman type seems to be the first half of the 5th century AD, a period characterized by important historical changes in the Carpathian basin.