Abstract:The thermoluminescence (TL) dating method has a significant measurement error margin reaching almost 10%. Due to this fact it could be considered as little effective in case of such sites from the Roman period as burial grounds with many artefacts useful for archaeological dating. However, for many settlements from this period, where pottery is the only kind of artefacts, the TL method can give notable results. The main purpose of the study was to make an attempt at TL dating of pottery and clay daub samples from the Nieszawa Kolonia and Kręcieszki sites and to compare the obtained dates with the results of archaeological dating of selected features from the Przeworsk Culture settlements. In the Kręcieszki site the fragments of burnt clay daub were dated by the TL method for the first time in the Lublin laboratory. It turned out that clay daub is an equally good dating material as pottery. It can be found that the TL dating of pottery from Nieszawa Kolonia confirms two stages of settlement. The first settlement stage is related to the phases B2-B2/C1-C1a of the Roman period, i.e. from the beginning of the 2 nd to the beginning of the 3 rd century. The second group of TL dates corresponds to the phases C2D that is to the second stage of settlement, from the second half of the 3 rd century to the half of the 5 th century AD. The results of TL dating of pottery and clay daub in the Kręcieszki site are rather similar and correspond to the phase B1/B2 of the period of Roman influence, determined from pottery style, but can also indicate the phase B2/C1.

The last twenty years have brought discoveries which provide a large number of sources concerning the archaeology of the Roman Period in the Lublin region. The interdisciplinary studies related to site 5 in Nieszawa Kolonia, Opole Lubelskie district, Lublin region, Poland, have generated a substantial part of these new sources. The multi-aspectual analysis of archaeological and biological sources allowed us to characterize of the economy of the dwellers of the settlement which was constituted by agriculture, animal husbandry and fishing. The relative chronology of the settlement was established, and the first stage of its functioning was determined as belonging to phase B2, until phase C1a inclusive. The second stage of the utilisation of the settlement is dated to phase C3-D1. Three instances of radiocarbon dating confirm the chronological frame established by relative dating. The presented analysis of selected archaeological sources from site 5 in Nieszawa Kolonia, especially of ceramic material, seems to confirm the possibility that in the early Roman period, in the Lublin region, especially in its western part, infiltration of Dacian cultural elements into the Przeworsk environment took place. It is undeniable that the chronology of the settlement in Nieszawa Kolonia extends beyond the established time frame assumed for the functioning of the Przeworsk culture in the Lublin region. It is possible that in the late Roman Period the history of the settlement in question is part of a series of changes that took place in the areas of Barbaricum and Roman provinces. Some of the settlers of northern origin could have returned to the former settlements. The settlement in the mesoregion of the Lesser Poland Gorge of the Vistula is of particular importance for the revision of previous interpretations of the cultural changes taking place in the Lublin region in the Roman Period and in the early Migration Period.