Roman gaming paraphernalia from the Rómer Flóris Museum in Győr, Hungary

Dobosi, Linda (2026) Roman gaming paraphernalia from the Rómer Flóris Museum in Győr, Hungary. ACTA ARCHAEOLOGICA ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARUM HUNGARICAE, 77 (1). pp. 103-124. ISSN 0001-5210

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Abstract

Hungarian museums are rich in artefacts connected to Roman gaming and play, and the systematic collection and publication of these finds adds to the growing body of knowledge about the ludic culture in classical antiquity. The territory of Roman Pannonia along the Danube limes still represents a research gap in the study of Roman gaming paraphernalia. The paper discusses pieces of Roman gaming equipment from the collection of the Rómer Flóris Museum of Art and History in Győr (Hungary). Although not large, the strength of the collection lies in the fact that most of the artefacts connected to Roman games come from modern excavations with secure find circumstances. The six-sided bone dice, bone gaming counters, and two possible grid type game boards come from four different Roman localities: the auxiliary fort and vicus of Arrabona (Győr), the late Roman cemetery of the Quadrata auxiliary fort and vicus (Mosonszentmiklós-Jánosházapuszta), the late Roman cemetery of Mursella municipium (Mórichida-Kisárpás), and the Roman road station at Gönyű. Gaming equipment from the cemeteries was rare, with only 3 of the 251 graves yielding ludic material: of these two were adult male burials and one child of unknown sex. A comparison with published Roman cemeteries from Pannonia shows that it is common for pieces of gaming equipment to turn up only in a small fraction of graves within a cemetery and that these graves usually contain one or two pieces at the most. Whole gaming sets, like the set of decorated bone counters from Mórichida-Kisárpás are quite exceptional.

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