Tools for ornamentation of pottery are iprecious and rare finds, mast
commonly discovered in settlements. Apart from individual finds of
small stamps made of bone or baker clay, we can mention sorne rare
tools wich, judjing by their shape, were probably used to polish ceramic
pots and to make shallow ·grooves. Several polished stane .tools in the
shape of short knives with thinned blade were discovered along with the
bone tools for the impression of the pseudo-cord, in Târpeşti settlement
(the iSabatinovka-Noua culture) in East Romania (T. 1/9-11)2.
The remains of a pottery shop from the .Early Iron Age ,settlement
(VIII-VII century) in the village of Sava (Vama district), in S-E of Bul-
garia, deserve particular attention 3 • Along with a rectangular room, the
remains of a kiln and numerous finds of badly baked, deformed vessels,
there were discovered several 'tools for ornamentation of pottery macle of
baked clay, bone and polished stone. Along with smaller stone polishers,
a stone tool with a very thinned, arched end was found, wich was pro-
bably also used to ornament vessels. A short, cylindrical bone iStamp is
at , the one end shaped to leave small impressions of double hexagons.
Two small, cylindrical tools ·made of 1baked ~lay terminate at both ends
in starnps for the impression into the wet clay of a vessel (T. 1/1, 2) .. 0ne
stamp was used to impress two small concentric circles, with/or without
a point,in the center. Another stamp terminates atone end oin plastically
modelled double circles, with a point in the center, and at the other, in
a narrow and short rib in the shape of letter „S". It 1 can be noted that
the imprint of the „S" stamp, if it is drawn ·correctely, belongs to the
so-called angular „S" motif (the upper parts of the letter „S" are an-
gulary broken) wich is most commonly impressed in the upright posi-
tion into the vessels of the Psenicevo culture. According to the find of
fibula with so-called :nodular appendage on the arch, discovered in the
waste pit near a kiln, the shop for the making of baked clay vessels da-
tes from the end of VIII or the first half/ of VII century. Let us remark
that a ceramic stamp for the impression of the pseudo-cord motif from
the Sava settlement was published (T. •Il/2) 4 •
Stamps for the ornamentation of pottery were mostly discovered in
the Early Iron Age settlements on the territory of Eastern Europe. As
far as we know, the majority consists of itools for the impression of the
so-called pseudo-cord motif, while among the others, the stamps with
stamped motifs rarely were the subject of a special paper, such as 1the
find of ceramic tool for the impression of the pseudo-cord motif from
the Cozia settlement (Iaşi county), ,wich iis classified as belonging to the
Babadag group (Babadag II phase) (T. II/3) 5 . B. Hansel has collected se-
vera! ceramic and bone stamps from the early and developed phase iof
the older Iron Age settlements in the area from Gate to East Molda-
via6. We have attemped, :without any pretension to completeness, to
apend the list of finds of this kind, limiting ourselves mainly to the ba-
bed clay tools, also discovered in the Basarabi culture settlemen'ts
(Map. 1).
