Late Iron Age Brooches Presumbly Discovered in the Dacian Fortress from Tilișca (Sibiu County)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present some Late Iron Age brooches that were discovered by the means of illegal metal detecting somewhere in Southern/South-Western Transylvania. According to available data, the brooches, along with other artefacts, may have been looted from the Dacian fortress on the Cățănaș hill from Tilișca, Sibiu county. Given that the brooches have been decontextualised, an interpretation of this assemblage could not be proposed. Still, the typological analysis of the brooches allowed me to extract new information and to formulate some observations regarding the brooches and dress style of pre-Roman Dacia from the second half of the 2nd c. BC until the beginning of the 2nd c. AD. Since the chronology and nature of the assemblage of the looted brooches correspond to that of the fibulae discovered during the archaeological research of the Dacian site from Tilișca, I have analysed the latter as well. However, because a direct connection with the Dacian fortress from Tilișca cannot be asserted, the brooches from the assemblage could not be interpreted together with the ones found with certainty on the site.