No abstract

The archaeological traces of the Roman mining and metallurgy in eastern Serbia are rather frequent but insufficiently studied and published. Three mining-metallurgical regions abounding in gold, silver, copper, iron and lead could be distinguished there: 1. the upper course of the Pek river, metalla Pincensia, 2. the area between Bor, Zlot, Crna Reka and Rgotina and 3. the area in the river basin of Beli Timok, two latter ones had been organized as territoria metallorum. The archeometallurgical sites confirmed by investigations are: Kraku lu Jordan at the confluence of the Brodica river and the Pek river, Rudna Glava, Tilva Roš in Bor, Gamzigrad - Romuliana, Rgotina near Zaječar and Timacum Minus in the village Ravna near Knjaževac. Roman mining-metallurgical activities in eastern Serbia flourished from the end of the 3rd century, were interrupted by the invasion of Huns in AD 441. and restored in the time of emperors Anastasius and Justin I, in the end of the 5th - beginning of the 6th centuries. The Roman mining-metallurgical centers functioned in the 6th century until the Slav invasion in the beginning of the 7th century

The Roman Empire expanded through the Mediterranean shores and brought human mobility and cosmopolitanism across this inland sea to an unprecedented scale. However, if this was also common at the Empire frontiers remains undetermined. The Balkans and Danube River were of strategic importance for the Romans acting as an East-West connection and as a defense line against "barbarian" tribes. We generated genome-wide data from 70 ancient individuals from present-day Serbia dated to the first millennium CE; including Viminacium, capital of Moesia Superior province. Our analyses reveal large scale-movements from Anatolia during Imperial rule, similar to the pattern observed in Rome, and cases of individual mobility from as far as East Africa. Between ca 250-500 CE, we detect gene-flow from Central/Northern Europe harboring admixtures of Iron Age steppe groups. Tenth-century CE individuals harbored North-Eastern European-related ancestry likely associated to Slavic-speakers, which contributed >20% of the ancestry of today's Balkan people.

The necropolises of the Roman fortification and settlement Timacum Minus, in the village of Ravna, near Knjazevac, were partially explored by systematical and rescue archaeological excavations. The most extensively explored was the part of the Late Roman necropolis on the eastern slope of the Slog hill, about 400m west of the fortification, where 80 graves from this period have been investigated. The analysis of the human osteological material, and the archaeological finds from the aforementioned necropolis, confirmed 17 military graves, containing adult male individuals with traces of injuries, stress markers and pathological changes, characteristic of a military population, as well as military equipment and weapons. At the time of the formation of the Late Roman necropolis at the site of Slog, during the second half of the 4th and the first half of the 5th century, the garrison of the Timacum Minus fortification consisted of an equestrian unit of pseudocomitatenses Timacenses, a part of the auxiliary formation that secured the forts and roads in the Timok region. Among the graves from the three phases of the Late Roman necropolis, similarities as well as certain differences are apparent, indicating changes in the structure of the civilian and military population of Timacum Minus. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177007: Romanisation, urbanisation and transformation of urban centres of civil, military and residential character in Roman provinces in the territory of Serbia]

In the site of Gamzigrad - Felix Romuliana 31 crossbow fibulae (Zwiebelknopffibeln) were found. Except the finds from large Roman necropolis, the crossbow fibulae from Gamzigrad compose a large collection from one site in Serbia. The most of them were found in the exactly stratified archaeological units of two horizons of life in Romuliana from the beginning of 4th to the middle of 5th century. Two kinds of analysis of the crossbow fibulae from Romuliana were made: morphological - typological and statigraphical - chronological. Conclusions about the function and production of the crossbow fibulae have been made according the results of these analysis.