Camee de epocă romană, cu reprezentări feminine, aflate în colecția Muzeul de Istorie Națională și Arheologie Constanța
Roman epoch cameo with feminine representations from the collection of the Museum of National History and Archaeology Constanța.

Summary/Abstract: The three cameos discussed in this article come from the preventive archaeological research from Tomis. Two of these were found in graves, and the context for the other one is not known exactly, but it can be assumed that it is also a funerary inventory object. All the cameos were mounted in objects of adornment, two earrings and a medallion, so that in addition to the function of decorating the jewelry, they also performed an apotropaic function, well known for the cameos with the image of Medusa and less known for the cameos with the representation the image of the Roman empresses. It should also not be overlooked that these cameos also had a propaganda function. The reason for the production of cameos decorated with the representation of empresses, on a large scale, during the time of Marcus Aurelius and the Severan dynasty, as well as the imperial orders of Constantine, is related to the special place occupied by the Danube provinces in imperial propaganda but also to the politics of dynastic legitimation. The artefacts exhibited at the Constanța museum were integrated through the present study, within the typology in use for Dacia and the surrounding provinces. Thus, the cameo with the representation of Medusa is added to a number of 22 gems and cameos found in Romanian collections, 12 of which have a known place of discovery. Also, the two precious stones with representations of Roman empresses are added to the 40 such cameos, with a known place of discovery, in the Middle and Lower Danube provinces. The cameos engraved with the image of the empresses could be identified with empresses from the Severan dynasty or even with Fausta, and therefore the dating was restricted for each of them, namely, the cameo medallion dates to the beginning of the 3 rd century as well as the earring, while the cameo in the earring discovered at Tomis was made in the first quarter of the 4th century, probably around the date when Fausta receives the title of Augusta.

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