Bánkiné Molnár Erzsébet: Nemesi közbirtokosságok a Kővár-vidéken. Vallomásos összeírás 1803-ból - Monumenta Muzeologica 1. (Kecskemét, 2007)

ground-plot in the village and how it had been broken up into smaller pieces in the course of time. In the chapter under the title "The relationship between spatial features and society as reflected in the testimonies" the author summarizes her conclusions with respect to the 18 villages in question in general, as well as - among others - concerning the pattern of land use in the inner part and on the outskirts of the villages, and the social structure of the group of local landowners. Within the social group of the noblemen who were public landowners, three special separate groups have to be also distinguished: those who were not residents of the village but had some of their landed estates there, the "extraneus" (non-residents having all their estates in the village) and the non-resident owners of non-cultivated, abandoned pieces of land. As far as the structure or the type of settlement is concerned, a distinction can be made between the owners of antiqua ground-plots who lived in the inner part of the villages - the villages either being of the type with a layout of streets or of a sort of an agglomeration of ground-plots - and noblemen who lived on the outskirts of the villages either in scattered dwellings or on parcels of land surrounded by neighbouring plots. The conclusion can be drawn that the process of breaking up the antiqua ground-plots located in the inner part of the villages into smaller and smaller pieces was going on as long as there was enough room on the plot for at least a house. In the 18 villages included in the investigation there were 45 "compossessors" who did not possess any ground-plot in the village at all. Most of them lived in the villages Berkeszpataka, Ilondapataka, Szelnitze and Butyásza. The area of the smallest of these inthe-village ground-plots was just 1/16

th of the original size. The biggest one was of the size of 10 butts (an area that could be put under wheat with 10 butts of seed). The author presents tables, village by village, showing the distribution of the ground-plots by size. The characteristic method of cultivation used on the fields on the outskirts of the villages was everywhere the two-course rotation. It was reported that in several villages agricultural activities were carried out jointly by relatives. In Fringfalva and Hosszúfalva, e.g. there was not one single public landowner who managed his farm individually on his own. In everyday practice noblemen shared the publicly owned land with the serfs and the landlord of the serfs. Unfortunately the testimonies do not reveal the rules according to which they divided the land among one another. It remains certain that the "compossessors" considered the public land as if it had been their own property, many of them occupied both 259