THE STRUCTURAL, MORPHOLOGICAL AND ELEMENTAL CHARACTERIZATION OF A SICA SCABBARD DISCOVERED AT BURIDAVA

Abstract

In 2019, on one of the most important dacian archaeological sites (Ocnița, Vâlcea County, Romania), in a tomb dug into the rock, along with various weapons, ceramics, bones, etc. there was also discovered a fragmentary sica scabbard. As a consequence of the lack of information on solely such iron-made objects, the urgent need to obtain as much information as possible regarding this type of military equipment was mandatory. Thus we applied different characterization methods aimed at obtaining results regarding the inner structure assembly of the scabbard, the chemical composition and the elemental distribution of the material the scabbard was made of, in order to better understand the technique used by the dacian blacksmiths. With the help of optical macroscopy, energy dispersive - X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (EDXRF), X-ray CT scanning, scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) we tried to reconstruct how the scabbard was made, and how it survived until present times.