Janus Pannonius Múzeum Évkönyve 13 (1968) (Pécs, 1971)

Régészet - Kralovánszky, Alán: The Paleosociographical Reconstruction of the Eleventh Century Population of Kérpuszta. Methodological Study

PALAEOSOCIOGRAPHICAL RECONSTRUCTION 81 The studies of László made it clear that the names of dwellings found in the earliest areas of settlement may be partitioned into three strata, following each other chronologically. The first is made up of toponyms formed after personal names. The second stratum, derived from the second and the third generation after the Conquest (896), contains village names reflecting natural phenomena or borrowed from the aboriginal inhabitants. The third stratum embraces village names fashioned after the names of the tribes; it comes from the period of the organization of large royal estates, i. e. the turn of the tenth and the eleventh centuries.

22 The investigated cemetery is situated at Kérpuszta. As »Kér« is the name of a Hungarian tribe in the time of the Conquest, the mentioned political changes may explain a new settlement, consequently the beginning of a new cemetery. Since the graves do not occupy more than the half of the hill, it is evident that the cemetery was left off on account of some exterior reason, instead of the lack of available space. Therefore the end of burials seem to be connected with the beginning of inhumation around the church prescribed by Chapter 73 of the so-called First Decree of King Coloman, issued at about 1100.

23 Suming up our statements, we believe that the cemetery was begun in the first years of St. Stephen's reign (998—1000) and used till the period after the rule of St Ladislas (1095— 1100), i. e. for one hundred years in round figures.

24 3. DEMOGRAPHY The demography of the Kérpuszta population is reconstructed already.

25 I do not want to repeat the data published in detail, restricting my view on the basic ones; the known picture will be completed by some new observations and statements only. a) The number of children: 157, females: 118, males 120, those between the years O-x: 10. Total: 405 souls. 22 László, 1944, 240. 23 Závodszky, 1904, 92. 24 Our dating differs from the original dating of Szőke, giving as the time limits of the use of the cemetery the last quarter of the tenth century and the beginning of the twelfth, spanning cca 120 years: Szőke, 1953; it also differs from his later view which reckons the existence of the cemetery from the second quarter of the tenth century to the end of the eleventh. Letter to the author from the 13th June 1958. 25 Acsádi—Nemeskéri—Harsányt, 1959. Life expectancy: 27,6 years. Life expectancy of people reaching 20 years: females 46,4 years, males 47,1 years. b) If we want to define the demographical relations of a population, we have to know the data of sex and age both as regards living and dead. But if one or the other group of data is not available, research becomes very difficult. F'urther we have to ask, whether one group oif finds allows us to draw ccnlusions on the other, and if so, to which degree? I refrain from dealing with all the theoretical relations of this problem, I just want to emphasize that the data of deceases do not inform us on the exact number of the living directly, the latter may be only assessed. This estimate has a most important theoretical condition: the number of the living cannot be less than that of the dead, since in the opposite case we ought to reckon with a vanishing community. Thus the reconstructed number may be regarded as a lower limit onlv; the real number may be more, net less. Another principled condition of the estimation is the assumption that in the lifetime of the first generation the analyzed cemetery is occupied also by those who belong to the generation prior to the beginning of burial. The same thesis is valid for the first generation during the lifetime of the second, for the second generation during that of the third, etc., whereas it is natural that at the time when the cemetery is relinauished the parting alive population is destined for another. Therefore all people who live will come into the cemetery in due course, and the surplus of the time of beginning will be equalized by the defect at the leaving of the cemetery in essence. In this way the number of the dead is absolutely identical with that of the living, with a maximal phase displacement of a half generation.

26 Considering the foregoing, the various supposed time limits of burial and the average life expectancy at Kérpuszta (27,6 years) we have tried to assess the number of generations, the average number of the dead in one generation, the average of the joint (extended) families (households) and houses. (Table 2.) The estimated data bear out the conclusion that in the case of the most probable variety (5,6), supposing that the cemetery was used from 998 to 1100, 3,4 to 3,9 generations were buried at Kérpuszta (the yearly average of dead: 3,7 to 4,2), and the average number totalled 103 to 119 in one generation. This means 15 to 17 nuclear families (г. e. households?), or houses, respectively. 26 A fundamental study on this group of problems: Acsádi, 1965.