Despre problema datarii mormantului cx. 20A de la Pecica-Duvenbeck ai a semnelor de cruce pe vasele ceramice din Bazinul Dunarii mijlocie / On the Question of Dating the Tomb CX. 20A from PECICA-Duvenbeck and the Signs of the Cross on Ceramic Vessels from the Middle Danube Basin

Abstract

Rescue excavation from Pecica-Duvenbeck from the year 2018 unearthed 582 complexes related to various periods, among them two groups of graves datable in the 7/8‒9th centuries. In a grave, complex no. 20A, there has been identified a pot, which has under the throat an incised cross sign. The skeleton, partially disturbed at the time of its robbery, seems to have been a woman adultus/maturus, with an estimated age of over 30 years. Besides presenting this interesting discovery, we also proposed a debate on the problem of the radiocarbon dating of the grave, because the same samples of the skeleton were analysed in two laboratories getting antagonistic results. However, in the light of typo chronology and the results of the other 8 samples from other graves in this funerary site, we can conclude that the grave can be dated at the end of the 7th and the first half of the 8th century. Out of the ceramic pot of the grave from Pecica, in only two cases we have been able to document cross-shaped marks on the wall of vessels in the Avar funerary environment (7–8th centuries); even cross-shaped marks were found in such non-Christian funerary contexts. Therefore, we think that the cross-shaped mark on the Pecica pot – in an environment dominated by a cultural habitus entirely different from the Christian world – was not a Christian symbol, but an interpretation as an apotropaic, i.e. as a symbol adopted and transformed according to the pagan mentalities of the 8th century, is a more plausible explanation.