Exhibitions

Bone comb, from Fodor's garden

(Șumuleu Ciuc – Miercurea-Ciuc, excavation 2022, pit 5).

In the III-IV centuries, after the withdrawal of the Roman Empire, a people of Germanic origin, the Occidentals or Visigoths, under their own name, the Thervings ("forest dwellers"), settled on the territory of Dacia and the outer region of the Carpathians. In archaeological terms, they are the population of the Sântana de Mureș–Cerneahov culture.

The so-called "hunched" combs, which are found in all the important sites of the period, are characteristic finds of the cemeteries and, less often, of the settlements of this population. “Our comb" is only 7.4 cm long and 4.4 cm high and consists of three elaborately worked bone plates (two symmetrical pincers and the incomplete comb plate serrated between them), held together by seven iron rivets.

Our discovery confirms the Gothic (Germanic) character of the settlement of the 2nd-4th centuries, but also draws attention to the strange situation of the research, because despite dozens of settlements and iron smelting activities of the period, we did not find even a contemporary cemetery or at least a grave...

The bone comb can be viewed at the museum's ticket office from Tuesday to Sunday, daily from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Year

2023

Month

November

Type

Archeology