Observaţii macroscopice şi microscopice asupra unui mojar descoperit în situl arheologic Şoimuş – Teleghi (judeţul Hunedoara)
Macroscopic and Microscopic Observations on a Mortar Discovered in the Archaeological Site from Şoimuş – Teleghi (Hunedoara County)

Summary/Abstract: During the archaeological investigations in Şoimuş (Hunedoara County), part of the Deva – Orăştie Highway Project 2011, in the place called Teleghi, was found a polished stone object with traces of use, which could be classified as a mortar. Unfortunately, the stone container was found after the mechanical stripping between the 30+240 – 30+280 kilometres, in an area with archaeological findings from Early Neolithic to Middle Age. This leaves open the question about its cultural affiliation. Although, based on the shape of the mortar and its details of use, captured with digital microscopy, we report an artefact, which, in our opinion, could belong to prehistoric times, in this case, probably, to Neolithic or Bronze Age. Careful macroscopic and microscopic observations, which were taken in the interior and exterior of the mortar, show us different types of wears which are composed especially from striations, incisions, grooves arranged in different ways etc. Other observations from the concavity of the mortar denote the presence of brown-reddish and black colour, which could suggest the crushing of this kind of pigments to obtain a powder.The relation of the artefact with similar prehistoric pieces from the Balkans and the Near East it’s obvious, from the typological point of view, but because its archaeological context we cannot specify an exactly cultural horizon. Because of the complexity of the wear traces revealed by microscopic and macroscopic observations on the mortar surface, in a further study we propose other investigations of the mortar, with physical-chemical analysis.

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