Jetoanele medievale din ceramică: utilităţi cu multiple dubii de interpretare / Medieval Ceramic Jetons: A Use with Multiple Doubts of Interpretation

Abstract

Archaeological excavations conducted in the Benedictine monastery from Frumuşeni (Bizere, Arad County) brought to light eight ceramic circular pellets which were made from damaged vessels, six of these have a central perforation. During an interval of approximately one millennium these could be found spread over a wide geographic area and were made from a variety of materials with specific forms. One part of these belong to the category of recycled materials. A convenient interpretation would have categorized these as ‘spindle whorls’ at least the ones with a central hole. One can find a generous literature discussing these however it is still short and superficial. Less researched are the iconographic representations but these cannot supply conclusive elements because of the small dimensions of the components of the whorls of the spindle. In addition, the ethnographic reality drastically limits the existence of the independent part demonstrating that the independent part disappeared merged in the wooden spindle and was taken over by the spinning wheel. The study discusses the materials, dimensions, marks or decorations, contexts of discovery, the number of objects or the contradictions between the interpretations of the same materials. As a general conclusion one can state that the safest would be not to automatically provide a certain or exclusive function to these forms. The context of Bizere as a monastery, where monks lived and worked would be in contradiction with the spinning. The re-analysis of the published groups lead firstly to the recognition of two groups of use in which we have subgroups and independent pieces. According to the same primary classification the disproportioned versions are also discussed, through which the archaeological finds could originate from decorative pieces (the second interpretation version) such as: rosaries (3), amulets (4), fittings or fibulas (5), buttons (6), pellets for games with marked surface (7), whirligig (8), and various facilities for weaving excluding spinning (9), fishing weights (10), drilling components (11), abacus pieces (12), wheels for toys (13), various dagger guards (14), corks (15), mosaic parts (16), weights for scales (17), rubbers for erasing wax tablets (18), stamps for wafers (19), supports for alchemical samples (20), modeling tools for pottery (21), rafts (22), compass stands (23), remains from other damaged objects but unused (24). The final conclusions is that for the context of the Benedictine abbey from Bizere the discovered finds are most unlikely spindle whorls but more probably jetons used for games. The topic opens up like a tree and implies continuous pondering on the useful forms even in the case of archaeological units considered insignificant or easily classifiable.