Pásztor Emília (szerk.): Sámánizmus és természethit régen és ma - Bajai dolgozatok 23. (Baja, 2019)
Cs. Andrási Réka: A Madaras-Árvai-dűlői honfoglalás kori temető az új kutatások tükrében
The cemetery of Madaras-Arvai dűlő revisited in the light of modern research Burial number 4 had 10 pieces of thin rectangular shaped mounts made of silver, they had holes on their side which were used to hang them on the harness. These objects were found close to the horse bones by Kőhegyi, thus we can safely assume, that they were used to ornate the bridle, or some parts of the saddle. To sum up we can say that in case of burials number 2 and 6 we are speaking of symbolic horse burials as there were no horse bones to be found with the deceased. In the graveyard from the Conquest period the most frequently found weapon complements - among bows - are the arrows, which can be broken down into three types at Árvai-dűlő. Sebetyén Cs. Károly researched these weapon types in more detail, in his work he categorized the different arrowhead variants (Cs. Sebetyén 1932, 193-206). The quivers placed in the graves were never filled completely with arrows - a quiver can contain 20-25 arrows at once -, in general 1-7 arrows were placed in the quiver. Dienes István related this phenomenon to the belief system, in his opinion these arrows were needed to move through the different layers of the underworld (Dienes 1957, 29-31; Dienes 1975, 96; Dienes 1978, 38-39; Dienes 1979, 88-89). Obviously, every object placed in the grave had some role in the underworld, however we cannot make more concrete assumptions as of he exact meaning of the number of the arrows placed in the quivers. Gyula László approached this question from a different side, he believed that the number of the arrow was representing the rank, the higher number of arrows suggest a higher-ranking person (László 1944,132). The hypotheses of László is outdated however, as sometimes poor graves had more arrows as the rich ones (Révész 1996,168). The two disturbed graves in Madaras contained flat headed arrowheads, both side of these were sharpened. Grave 1 contained 5 pieces with the following form variants: 1 rhombic, 3 short headed and 1 bigger, leafshaped arrowheads. Grave 2 contained only two arrowheads, one being leaf-shaped and the other a rhombic like piece. Kőhegyi defined only the leaf-shaped and deltoid ones (Kőhegyi 1980, 216). Grave 1 showed remains of a quiver. Since the heavy machinery did serious damage to this burying site only a narrow, 5 cm long, straight iron strap was found. On if its end reminiscent of a cramp iron, the other one missing. In grave 2 three smaller partial iron cramps were documented as well. These were hammered flat, and a part of a ring used to hang the quiver was found too. Also, they found a strap distributor, divided into three pieces by an indent which had a leaf motive in the center. This strap distributor made of bronze was a separator for the straps of the quiver (Kőhegyi 1980, 211-214). Quivers strengthened by iron straps were commonly used from the beginning of 10th century to the first half of the 11th century (Vályi 1994, 931). 56 //////////////////Щ^^^
