Abstrakt
Research of building terracotta has great importance in understanding of Roman building activity. Not only on Roman camps, but also on civil buildings, stamped bricks often give us the only information about dating of various building phases.
Current dating is base d mostly on epigraphic analyses which are not accurate in most cases. Thanks to the uniqueness of every die used for stamping, stratigraphically dated finds can enable identification of material also from different locations.
Since use of epigraphical anal yses is not suitable in this case, new system was developed, based on computer application. The system is derived from morphometric analyses, which use is not common in archaeology.
Data are collected and measured from vertical photos of stamps. The system is based on extracting of coordinates from the photos and subsequent mathematical comparison of the data.
The analysis examines the shape of edge of stamp impression and then it compares its exact dimensions. Comparative criteria were developed precisely for the Roman stamped brick material.
Analyses on finds from Mušov - Burgstall and Vindobona have even proven that current typological sorting can be incorrect. In fact, stamps separated into several types proved to come from one die.
High accuracy of this m ethod also enabled identification of the fragmentary stamps. The comparison system is more complicated in this case, because the proportions and position of every preserved letter is taken into consideration.
The advantage of this system is, that three pre served letters are sufficient to reconstruct the rest of the stamp.