The purpose of this volume was to bring together two previously published studies on two different archaeological units of the same site. This idea came as the authors have a long experience on what it means to keep searching and bring together information in order to have an overall picture on a subject. Furthermore, the stratigraphic and the numismatic analyses of the two archaeological units – the baths complex and the vicus – offer the possibility to synchronise the building phases between the baths and the vicus and to include the numismatic evidence in the general statistics of the site (tables; graphs).
Certainly, one can ask why we did not proceed from the beginning directly with a book? It was all depending on various unpredictable factors such as: the area of excavations; the length of the period for systematic investigations/year; the relevance – quantity and quality – of the numismatic evidence that was going to be collected during excavations; the financial support involved to allow, first, to continue the archaeological investigations, second, to which scale can the excavations be carried on.
The rescue excavations following the building of a segment of the motorway A3, Brașov-Borș, have led to the discovery of almost the entire area of the archaeological site of Sutor (hypothetically identified with the ancient Optatiana mentioned on the Peutinger’s Tabula): the auxiliary fort, the bath complex and the vicus. Unfortunately, as the investigations has proven, the auxiliary fort area cannot be properly excavated as the alluvial layer – a consequence of the numerous floods of the river Almaş in 1879, 1980 – has a thickness up to 2 m.
„Roman pottery is an important indicator of provincial economic life at multiple levels. the detailed study of this material culture category provides valuable information regarding the characteristics of the local ceramic industry and the geographic distribution of its products, either regionally or at the scale of whole the Empire, but is equally revelatory for the reconstruction of various aspects regarding the local population's everyday life. their culinary preferences are reflected by their choice of cooking, serving, storing, and transportation vessels, furthermore, the funerary rites can also be differentiated according to the pottery gravegoods, while the patterns of construction activities can be highlighted by the quantity of ceramic building material (CBM) produced and used in various periods.
The ceramic goods were produced in workshops whose integral structures were often only superficially treated within the investigation of certain sites, thus hindering the possibility of elucidating the process and organization of the pottery production of these provincial centres. For this reason the information needed to outline a comprehensible image concerning this important branch of the ancient economy has to be pieced together from fragmentary datasets which once joined together offer an extremely interesting picture.” (Introduction)