PLAYING GAMES IN EARLY MEDIEVAL TIMES Possible Archaeological Examples from the Sylvanian Basin (Salaj County, Romania)

In the Romanian archaeological literature, games and toys from the medieval period have hardly been subjects of study and analysis, perhaps due to the rarity of such artefacts that can be connected to leisure time. The artefacts analysed on this occasion come from archaeological excavations carried out on sites from the north-western part of Romania, more precisely from the Sylvanian Basin, a geographical area that lies within the administrative territory of the county of Salaj. Artefacts that may have multiple functionalities often appear within archaeological inventories discovered in settlements. The limitations of the research mean that in many cases it is impossible to establish the functionality of some objects with certainty, cases in which we can only make assumptions/proposals. In the case of the geographical area under analysis (the Sylvanian Basin) we also note the existence of early medieval artefacts whose possible function as toys or as components of games can only be hypothesized.