Samum (castrum)
Samum was a castrum in the Roman province of Dacia, situated at the very northern border of that territory. It lay on the right side of the river Someș, in historical and later known as Transylvania, in of present Romania. Remnants of this relatively small fortified camp lie within the cadastre of village Cășeiu, on the southwest edge of the village.
This castrum in a typical square shape was built as an auxiliary military camp at the beginning of the 2nd century, in times of the Emperor Trajan, while it was fully abandoned by the army after 270 AD, when Emperor Aurelian decided to give up the difficult-to-defend province. Traces of late Roman or post-Roman habitation have been noted.
History
Like the other forts of Limes Porolissensis, it was initially built out of earth and wood just after the end of Trajan's Dacian Wars, and later rebuilt from stone. One particularity at Samum is the lack of archaeological evidence of a wooden palisade on top of the vallum.An inscription commemorating Julia Domna provided a clue to the timeframe when the fort defences were rebuilt from stone, a hypothesis confirmed by recent excavations.