Horváth Attila – H. Tóth Elvira szerk.: Cumania 4. Archeologia (Bács-Kiskun Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei, Kecskemét, 1976)
H. Tóth E.: Az Izsák-balázspusztai honfoglaláskori lovassír
consideration.' 1 It would be very interesting to investigate, as a control, the mutual data of the monuments of the Magyar shaman belief and those of the neighbouring people, and to separate where they diverge. All these though are beyond the scope of a find-report, and are not primarily the task of the archaeologist. As far as the finds of the grave are concerned it must be stated that there are no such objects which could in any way prove the existence of the burial of a shaman (táltos) or shaman horse. Neither an amulette, nor an animal-head-tipped stick came to light, nor any other object which could have been considered cultic. On the contrary the find complex, the belt, the bow, the quiver, the arrow, the mounted sabretache indicate that our grave find was the burial of a high ranked lonely man of the leading class of the conquesting Magyars 42 , and is not at all unprecedented among the Conquest Period finds of our country. István Dienes quoting Radloff though, refers to the role of the bow and arrow in shamanistic ceremonies, and states that the ancient shaman tool was not the drum, but the bow. 43 Nevertheless the bow in our find is not small, symbolic, but a bone plated bow. Furthermore instead of 7—9 arrows, only one arrow head remained, thus these must have been used as weapons, and not as shamanist instruments. Considering the occurrance of the small mounting which can be possibly taken as a stylized human face no cult objects can be found among the finds of neither Bashalom, Bodrogvégcse, nor Karos, Thus the shamasistic characters of this piece cannot be taken proven.Finally the damaging of the objects placed in the grave, which can be presumed justly in the case of the saddle and the pieces of one type of mountings, was a widely spread custom, thus we must state that from the point of view of the finds János 41 Gy. LÁSZLÓ: Népvándorlás kor művészete Magyarországon. The art of the Conquest Period in Hungary. Bp. 1972. 106. From Vértesszőlős to Pusztaszer. Bp. 1974. 254. I. FODOR: Verecke híres útján. Following the famous route of Verecke. (Bp. 1975. 198. 42 B. SZŐKE: op. cit. Tan. I. (Bp. 1962) 43 I. DIENES: A bashalmi (Szabolcs-Szatmár m.) honfoglalás kori magyar temető. (The Bashalom (SzabolcsSzatmár Counties) Conquest Period Magyar cemetery.) Arch. Ért. U. HARVÁ Die Religiösen Vor-Stellangen der Altaischen Völker V. FFC. 125. (Helsinki 1938.) 537-538. W. RADLOFF: Aus Sibirien. (Leipzig, 1884.) 1.511-513. Matolcsi's supposition of a shaman and a shaman horse cannot be neither supported nor proven. Neverthelles his hypotehesis connot be left out of consideration, or cannot be thrown out, if we take into account that the "bad" horse did not get into the grave for saving the horse-stock 44 , since the unusual bone plated saddle must have been worth much more than several riding horses. The available grave objects give little possibility for dating the find. The dating of the Soltszentimre find moves within wide limits due partially to the accompanying objects partially to the ornamentation of the saddle. Dating theGádoros find Csanád Bálint is inclined to date it to and the 10th century based on the rosetted trappings, the early analogies of the animal headed small strapends. 45 However no tangible piece for dating presents itself fiom the piece of the Izsák—Balázspuszta find, and the dating of the analogies is no less a problem. As a matter of fact none of the listed parallels are authentic, they either from part of scattered finds, or no numismatic finds came to light from the authentically excavated related find complexes. Thus we must take into account the coins, coming to light from scattered finds, or close graves of the analogies, although they bear no direct dating value upon oui find. Scattered dirhams turned up from the Karos find which has several mounting types related to ours. These would give a dating possibility to the beginning of the 10th century. 1 " There is no proof though that the Pavian denarius (Lothar II) from Soltszentimre 47 could be connected in any way with the pieces of the well known Conquest Period find, thus from the point of dating it must be left out of consideration. Along the listed analogies of the collected Bodrogvégcs finds (sabretache plate, mountings) there were coins dated to the first third of the 10th century 48 . Due to the special circumstances of their coming to light these parallels are not fit for dating. 44 Cs. BÁLINT stated that most horse burials of the Conquest Period contained developed, sometimes rather old and favourite riding horses. MFMÉ 1970. I. 45 Cs. BÁLINT manuscript 46 L. HUSZÁR: Das Münzmaterial in den Funden der Völkerwanderungszeit in Mittleren Donaubecken. Acta Arch. V. 1954. 81. LXXXVIII. 47 L. HUSZÁR: op. cit. Acta Arch. 1954. 93. CLXXXI. 48 L. HUSZÁR: op. cit. Acta Arch. 1954. 67. XIV-XV. 172
