Folia archeologica 46.

Ritoók Ágnes: A magyarországi falusi templom körüli temetők feltárásának újabb eredményei

LATEST RESULTS OF EXCAVATIONS OF VILLAGE CHURCHYARDS IN HUNGARY Some new results of the Hungarian churchyard archaeology have been summed up below. During excavations of religious places, the investigation of their churchyards has often only secondary importance. Since mediaeval village-vicarages were built usually in a simple, stereotyped form, consequently the exact dating of their construction and the formation of the parish-network could be determined by the grave-goods unearthed in the surrounding cemeteries. Cemeteries of the 11

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h— 1

2

t

h c. are defined as commoners' cemeteries or churchyards. Recently, a transitional type has been observed: in some cases 11

t

h c. burials were contaminated by the earliest walls of an almost contemporary stone/brickbuilt church, without any evidence of an earlier, probably smaller timber or loam chapel at the same site. This phenomenon suggests that the 'original' cemeteries of these communities were converted into churchyards. As cemeteries moved to the church (at the latest in the middle of the 12

t

h c.), the connection between the 'living' and 'dead village' has changed. The most important element of this new relation was that the church itself and later (from the 13

l

h c. onwards) the walled churchyard as well served as a safe storing place of valuables and a refuge during the times of war. During the 1 1

t

h—13

t

h c. graves were laid in more-or-less regular, N-S rows around the church. In some cases smaller, probably family groups have been observed within these rows. A gradual concentration of burials appears along the outside (esp. the S and E) walls of the church. The orderly arrangement of burials refers to the use of probably wooden grave markers. 11

t

h-13

t

h c. grave-slabs laid on the surface have still survived, most of them in a secondary position, strengthening later walls of the church. They might have covered burials of priests or perhaps those of 'illustrious' members of the parish community. In spite of the external overcrowding of churchyards, the interiors ofvillage churches of this period did not abound with graves at all, since only the founders and their families were allowed to bury inside by the canonic law. Social ana economic changes in Hungary during the 13

l

h-14'

h c., have been registered in some respects in churchyards as well. By erection of surrounding wall-fences, the burial area was fixed. The enclosed churchyard became sometimes less wide than the earlier cemetery. At the same time the graves of this late medieval period were concentrated on tne S side of the church. In some cemeteries the very lack of 14

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h— 16

t

h c. burials has been observed on the N. In some way similar differences appeared between the S and N part of the cemetery of some monasteries of the 12

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h-13

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h c. 'Rich' graves (containing gold/ silver jewellery, pits of masonry) were laid to the S side of the church, whilst poor burials have been excavated on the N. Though this phenomenon cannot be explained exactly at the moment, it is worth to mention in this respect, that the Northern quarter of heaven has a negative meaning in almost every human culture. Accordingly the hell has been allocated to the North in the other world topography of the mediaeval vision literature. Most grave pits are rectangular. Mainly in the 12

t

h— 13

t

h c., some graves of several cemeteries were surrounded by stones or bricks. It is thought to derive from sepulchral-vaults of high ranking people and thus might reflect social differ-