Profesor Rudolf Jamka – badacz okresu rzymskiego

Professor Rudolf Jamka was among the first Polish scholars to address issues of the younger pre-Roman Period, and the Roman Period as well. His extensive output includes many pioneering works concerning the inflow of terra sigillata, Roman coins, and studies on wheel-made pottery of the Przeworsk culture, among others. He is the author of monographs on Przeworsk culture cemeteries in Kopki, Nisko District; Starachowice, Starachowice District; and Ciosny, Zgierz District. Jamka conducted research on the cemeteries in Chmielów Piaskowy, District Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski and in Błonie, District Sandomierz, and he published sepulchral materials from various regions within the Przeworsk culture range, sometimes considerably distant from Lesser Poland, always attaching particular importance to determining the precise chronology of the analysed materials. In southern Lesser Poland, he identified for the first time the pottery of the Púchov culture, based on his own work in Wola Duchacka in Kraków. The professor also addressed the economic foundations of the development of communities inhabiting southern Poland and the adaptation of the economy to the environmental conditions, especially in the Carpathian zone. Another line of his research concerned the ethnic interpretation of populations inhabiting the lands in the Odra and Vistula basins. His works devoted to brooches, artefacts he believed to be particularly good chronological indicators, make up an important part of his scientific output. He was the first in Poland to distinguish the brooch varieties not included in Almgren’s classification, i.e. brooches combining features of groups II and IV and brooches of the Leonów type. Rudolf Jamka is also the author of an extensive study on eye brooches.