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

ground-plots to build their house and parcels of land on the outskirts from the public land. The events of occupying and clearing areas in the forests are the most striking phenomena. By the time the investigation was carried out and the testimonies were recorded, the size of the antiqua ground-plot as well as the rules of proportion associated with this size had become loose, and became sort of absorbed in the general aim of protecting the privileges of the nobility. The continuous migration also made it more difficult to reach a consensus. The process, by which the landed estates of different legal status were mixing with each other in terms of their spatial distribution, was facilitated, apart from the clearings, also by the procedures of putting and taking the estates in pawn. Some people took in pawn pieces of land in copyhold, others cleared grounds in the prohibited forests of the Teleki-estate. In the local practice of cultivation the parcels of land were connected by the courses of rotation. On the basis of the names of the fields located on the outskirts of the villages, as well as by considering the periphrastic geographical designations, it can be deducted how the parcels of plough-land and the hayfields were grouped in each particular course of rotation. By collating the designations and names of the fields - that are mostly of Romanian language - and the type of cultivation, it can be concluded that in the fields situated on a hilly, wooded terrain, the pieces of arable land were located separately, in patches. On the area of one particular arable patch of land, every landowner having a share in the area cultivated his parcel of land in the same course of rotation. Vineyards were surrounded with hedge, that was the case e.g. in Berkesz. Except for the Hungarian stock of names in Berkesz, in the other 17 villages Hungarian geographical designations and family names are only to be found sporadically. Some references within the text, however, lead us to believe that in several cases Hungarian and Székely-Hungarian population were also present, Hungarian and Romanian population lived in the village side by side in co-existence. The author gives a brief overview of the sock of names referring to the natural and social environment. In the second part of the publication you will find information on the sources used. The structure of the list of testimonies is uniform. The commissioners carrying out the investigation went from village to village and asked the witnesses the very same questions, making a precise record of the names and the social status of the witnesses. 260