Roman stamped bricks from Brigetio from the 1927–1929 excavations of István Paulovics

Abstract Modern topographical research in and around the legionary fortress of Brigetio (Komárom/Szőny, Hungary) started in the 1920s motivated by the desire to stop the centuries-long archaeological lootings at the site and to prevent further loss of archaeological data caused by the uncontrolled removal and selling of artefacts. The excavations led by István Paulovics between 1927 and 1929 touched upon the northern surrounding wall of the castra , a short section of the via decumana south of the fortress and parts of the late Roman cemeteries southeast of the fortress. During the excavation 67 stamped bricks and tiles were collected and taken to the Hungarian National Museum. Forty-five of them were mentioned in the 1933 brick stamp corpus of J. Szilágyi, but 22 have never been published. The significance of the material is twofold. On the one hand it yielded a wide array of Valentinian tile stamps, for example the stamps of Lupicinus tribunus , Terentianus tribunus , Caris tribunus , Verianus tribunus , Corta Vicen, Quadriburgium, and Vincentia. On the other hand, 27 of the 43 legio I Adiutrix stamps (the garrison of Brigetio between the early second and early fifth centuries AD) came from late Roman archaeological contexts, which means that some of the types of the otherwise undatable legio I Adiutrix stamps can now be dated with reasonable probability to the fourth century.