Horváth Attila – Solymos Ede szerk.: Cumania 5. Ethnographia (Bács-Kiskun Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei, Kecskemét, 1978)

Égető M.: A lakáshasználat változásai a szanki tanyákon az utóbbi száz évben

ponded to those of the original dwelling-places of the settlers. The settlers themselves made the overwhelming majority of their furniture also in the second period in spite of the fact that in their original dwelling-places they had bought furniture made exclusively by local craftsmen. The explanation is that in their new surroundings they had to spend all their income on the establishment of their farms, the furniture of the houses and the general equipment of the households remained on a low niveau. It is noteworthy that the furniture and utensils made by their own hands were not of casual, incidental solutions at all, the makers returned to constructions based on very old structural principles. The beginning of the third period can be comparatively well determined in time. A part of the farms, that had not started with equal chances even at the very beginning, proved to be profitable by the end of the 1910s and brought a safe income to their owners. Such settlers built new houses of larger dimensions using better building materials, more modern technical solutions together with a better execution. The furniture of these houses was bought from craftsmen working in the neighbouring towns. This period lasted ca. from 1920 till the 1950s. This examination revealed that the settlers coming from different dwelling-places did not preserve the cultural characteristics of their original villages or towns. Adjusting themselves to the new circumstances, they actually developed a special „farmstead way of life." The author carried through the examination of the material objects of the houses embedded into the wider frame of the way of life. Concerning the divaricate elements of the everyday life of the families she mainly concentrated on the four most important ones: a) the resting places of the families, b) the places of baking/cooking c) the places of eating, d) the places of certain basic houseworks (baking bread, washing, etc.). The examination also extended to the differences in life-style between the winter and summer periods. It studied each room of the house separately, the different parts of the yard and other buildings according to the home function. 195