EPHEMERIS NAPOCENSIS, XIX, 2009, p. 157–175 THE DATE OF THE APPEARANCE OF THE S-ENDED LOCK-RINGS IN THE TRANSYLVANIAN BASIN ∗ Erwin Gáll Keywords: S-ended lock rings, Transylvanian Basin, jewelry In the system of death-symbols jewellery played an important role in the case of women, while in the case of free men weapons had this symbolic role in the early Middle Ages. Examining it more thoroughly the problem seems to be more complicated. The occurrence of the weapons in the early Middle Ages' cemeteries is not surprising, since prestige, status and rank was expressed in burying in the same way than in everyday life. The question of jewellery is more complex. Although jewellery is known mainly from women's graves, the male or female character should be considered as cultural construction from the aspect of jewellery wearing. This explains the fact that they can also be found in men's grave as externally similar cultural items 1 . In connection with jewellery there is another special problem. The exact chronological limitation of the usage of an object is almost impossible. It definitely holds true for fashion- items, while in the case of weapons their spread or disappearance can be caused by more practical reasons. Whereas the spreading of fashion-items is rather a social psychological phenomenon. Therefore the chronological curve of jewellery usage can be drawn with difficulties. This paper is about only one jewellery: a type of lock-rings, the S-terminal lock-ring 2 . As Béla Miklós Szőke and László Vándor dealt with its wearing thoroughly in their work published in 1987, we can disregard the general discussion of it 3 . The question of this essay is about the possible date of the appearance of S-terminal lockring in the Transylvanian Basin 4 . Firstly, it should be stated that in the research of the conquest it is a very important tendency to limit the chronological scale of the different objects between rigid chronological frames. It has had a significant effect on the research of the early Middle Ages, which is often influenced by minority frustration. As an example the following method can be mentioned: both the Romanian and Hungarian (from Romania) archeologists date the object from the Transylvanian Basin with parallels found in big distance. This method is absolutely wrong. When dating an object it is dangerous either to compare it with finds in big geographical distances. It would be better to examine the excavated grave and cemetery more thoroughly. For this it would be necessary to excavate the known cemeteries completely and publish the findings. Based on the latter the problems could be examined on microregional level. In general, critiques about mechanically dating method of nowadays' archeology is legitimate. In many cases the researcher dates the object indirectly, based on another essay and ∗ Translated by Erika Manyasz. 1 Some examples for this, see: GÁLL 2007, 397. 2 SZŐKE 1962, 88. 3 SZŐKE/VÁNDOR 1987. 4 Béla Szőke's suggestion at the conference of Budapest (30. 05. 2007-06. 01. 2007)