Early La Tène scheme iron fibulae in the Republic of Moldova

The present study brings to the foreground of discussions a certain type of artifacts, the importance of which in the process of analyzing archaeological finds is difficult to overestimate, but which, unfortunately, was not used by the researchers to the proper extent. Thus, in the archaeological literature there is no single work on the Iron Age fibulae that were discovered on the present-day territory of the Republic of Moldova. Moreover, even when some specimens were introduced into scientific circulation, their publication was very short, often without a clear and precise presentation of the context, and the images accompanying incomplete texts in most cases are not clear enough for detailed analysis. Based on this situation, we decided to fill this historiographic gap and at the first stage we devoted our research to the iron fibulae of the early La Tène scheme found on the territory of the Republic of Moldova. As a result of the investigation, a lot was allocated, consisting of 12 fibulae, most of which were found on the territory of the Getic hillforts on the right bank of the Dniester. The degree of preservation of the items leaves much to be desired. The number of undamaged fibulae is relatively small, and those preserved fragmentarily create sufficient impediments for the possibilities of classification. Despite these circumstances, a catalogue of early La Tène scheme fibulae was developed, on the basis of which the main analogies were identified both in the neighboring areas (Romania and Ukraine), and in the Central Europe. We suggested to trace the chronological landmarks for the existing analogies, as well as to evaluate the chronological framework of the presented artifacts. At the same time, we set out to follow the ways and means by which these fibulae reached the Prut-Dniester area and, where possible, to highlight probable phenomena and processes that were behind the respective distribution of this type of artifacts.