004_A bit of Magdalensberg variant of Dacian bits from Sisak (uploaded 4. 9. 2015)

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004_A bit of Magdalensberg variant of Dacian bits fromSisak (uploaded 4. 9. 2015)

Ivan Drnić, curator of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb, sent to me on August 18, 2015 photographs of four bridle bits, discovered in the bed of the Kupa river in Sisak in Croatia.

I have presented three of them at forum of the Artefacts – Online Encyclopedia (subjects 223 to 225).

The typological assignment and the dating of the second bit remain unknown.

The third one represents a special variant of the Dacian bits:https://www.academia.edu/15358675/003_A_well_preserved_bridle_bit_of_Dacian_type_from_Sisak_uploaded_3._9._2015_

To another variant of Dacian bits belongs the first bit from Sisak.

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The Dacian bits were first assembled and studied by Vlad Zirra (Hamburger Beiträge zur Archäologie 8, 1981, 131–132, Fig. 8).

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Some years later Wolfgang M. Werner, a doctoral student of professor Otto-Herman Frey in Hamburg, dealt with them again (Werner 1988, Eisenzeitliche Trensen, 48–50, Pls. 23–24). He designated the most numerous form as Type VIII. The bits of this type are of iron.

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The mouth-piece is two-part, the thick bars of each part have a square cross-section. The cheek-pieces have a form similar to the propeller. They have in themiddle two rectangular or semi-circular loops. The ends can be triangular, semi-oval or fan-shaped. Some bits have next to these bar-shaped cheek-pieces small wheels with four spokes and on the internal side four or more points. The Dacian bits of type VIII after Werner were found mostly in fortified Dacian settlements, some of them even in warrior graves (Werner 1988, Pl. 70: A). A fragmented propeller-shaped cheek-piece is known also from the settlement on Židovar in Serbian Banat (Božič 1984, O starosti, in: Keltski voz).

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In the cremation layer above terrazzo of taberna OR/23on Magdalensberg in Carinthia, dated to the Claudian period, an almost complete bridle bit was found, whichhas an iron mouth-piece and other parts, made of copper alloy. Some parts of this bit were published already by Martha Deimel, who didn’t know any

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comparisons (Deimel 1987, Die Bronzekleinfunde, 94, Trensenteile aus Bronze, 324–326, Pl. 86: 1, 3, 9).

In the book of Heimo Dolenz on the iron finds from Magdalensberg this bit and an identical fragment of a

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cheek-piece from Kempten (Mackensen 1987, Frühkaiserzeitliche Kleinkastelle, 167, 170, No. 34, 165, Fig. 66: 20) were assigned to the Magdalensberg variant of Dacian bits (Dolenz 1998, Eisenfunde, 91–93, Fig. 23). The rectangular loops protrude from the narrow side ofthe cheek-pieces.

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Dolenz mentioned also a copper alloy cheek-piece, found in the Augustan military camp at Augsburg-Oberhausen in Bavaria (Hübener 1973, Die römischen Metallfunde, 39, No. 15, Pl. 24: 15). It has globular knobs at the top of the widened ends.

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The best comparison for this cheek-piece is an unpublished iron example, which belongs to an extremely important find of horse gear, discovered in the year 1913 at Orešac near Virovitica in the Croatian Drava region (Schönfelder 2002, Das spätkeltischeWagengrab, 237, Tab. 36, 245, Fig. 153).

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I was made familiar with it in the year 1998 by Dubravka Balen-Letunić, the then curator of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb. The Orešac find complex is dated to the LT D2 period.

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Letter of D. Balen-Letunić to me from October 13, 1998, page 1

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Letter of D. Balen-Letunić to me from October 13, 1998, page 2 (Dubravka has made drawings of the cheek-

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piece and of the wheel with four spokes and four points, both of iron)

If we now try to define typologically the bridle bit from Sisak (Inv. No. 20223), it is clear that it can be assigned to the Magdalensberg variant because of the rhombically widened external parts of the cheek-pieces and the profiled knobs at their ends. It nevertheless represents a subvariant, because the rectangular loops protrude from the wide part of the cheek-pieces just like on the iron bits of Dacian type(Werner, type VIII). Also the strap fittings inserted in the loops have not the same form as the strap fittings of the bit from taberna OR/23 on Magdalensberg. The only exact comparison I know are the fittings on the Dacian iron bit of type VIII from the Dacian fortress on the Cățânaș Hill near town Tilişca in the Sibiu County in southern Transylvania (Lupu 1989, Tilişca, 74, Pl. 24: 11).

The exact dating of the bit form Sisak is not possible. Because of the features, which appear also

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on the iron Dacian bits, dated to the LT D period (themouth-piece, the unusual strap fittings and the loops,protruding from the wide, not from the narrow side of the cheek-pieces), it is very probably earlier than the bits from Magdalensberg and Kempten, possibly evenfrom the Augustan period.

Ljubljana, September 3, 2015 Dragan Božič