FIBULE PIEDUTE – FIBULE REGĂSITE. CAZUL ALBA IULIA

The current paper presents a batch of 77 brooches seized by the Romanian Police from different persons involved in illegal archaeological activities. Five brooches (Cat. Nos. 1-5) can be chronologically framed during the 1st century BC – 1st century AD and are coming probably from the area of the Dacian fortresses along the Middle Mureș Valley. The rest of the brooches (Cat. Nos. 6-77) were all found in the territory of the Roman civilian settlements or forts in the area of the Grădiștea Valley. The Roman town at Apulum is among the first probable sites that this batch of brooches might have come from. If this working hypothesis is to be true, then, the brooches presented below should be added to the more than 250 already published brooches from Apulum. The items presented with this occasion belong to various types of brooches known in the Roman province of Dacia, but some exceptional artefacts (such as Cat. Nos. 57, 59, 63, 67, 73 or 77) are brooches that are attested in the province for the first time, enriching thus the corpus of Roman brooches in Dacia.