Janus Pannonius Múzeum Évkönyve 13 (1968) (Pécs, 1971)
Régészet - Kralovánszky, Alán: The Paleosociographical Reconstruction of the Eleventh Century Population of Kérpuszta. Methodological Study
92 KRALOVÁNSZKY criminals and the slaves were shorn/' 8 (It deserves mention that this jewel was not only attached or woven into the plait but it was also worn on the female headdress, encircling the head, e. g. in the graves no. 56, 138, 156, 244, 261, as it is accepted and proclaimed by Szőke, on the basis of the remnants of textile and leather found in those graves.)'' 0 This explanation would support the legitimate suggestion that the lack of the S-ended hair ring seems to allude to social standing: serfdom or punishment. 6. Not everyone was allowed to use it. This means that the individual, though able to purchase the jewel financially, is barred from, it by the unwritten law of society, of the given community. In connection with this hypothesis the total of the S-ended hair rings at Kérpuszta, 178 pieces, deserves mention. Together with the children whose female sex could be established (78), the total of those belonging to this sex is 118 + 78 = 196 heads. If we want to compare the number of the S-ended hair rings with that of the female sex, we should not forget that 2 women and 3 children wore simple hair rings, our comparison should therefore start with the number of 115 women and 75 girls, a total of 190 individuals. Further we may state that the minimum of the S-ended hair rings found in the cemetery makes 176, being of the same order as the number of people belonging to the female sex: 190. We mentioned a minimum, since in graves 182, 280, 306, 338, 351 and 371, in which traces of patina led us to reckon with one piece each at the least, may have been more than one piece each. Though it may be a mere coincidence, this datum forces us to put forward a further hypothesis, i. e. the possible connection of the two data. In our judgment, such an eventual connection may be proved only if we suggested that the number of S-ended hair rings were a mark of the number of females belonging to the economic and financial unit, subjected to the economic and social superiority of another. Evidently a golden S-ended hair ring could be due to such a woman who occupied an outstanding place in society, who directed the work of much more females than those members of her sex who (or whose husbands) could not afford to acquire a golden jewel. 5 " This is contradicted 48 Závodszky, 1904 cap. XIX. 49 Szőke, 1953 291. Among others the site Stare Mesto yielded such ornaments of headdresses in situ, together with remnants of leather or textile fabrics. Hruby 1955 371—536. 50 Golden S-ended hair rings are known only from very few sites. Fehér— Ery —Kralovánszky, 1962 Nr. 520, 590, 908, 1119. by the fact that not only women, the active partners in production, wore S-ended hair rings but also girls, though the latter may have been the daughters of free people who inherited the economic and social status of their parents when they grew up. Another reason contradicting this hypothesis is the fact that such an explanation would involve a strong social binging, an all-pervading influence of unwritten law which would be unlikely among the Hungarians of the eleventh century. 7. The S-ended hair rings may mean the number of births. This supposition must be discarded at the outset, since among others there are 18 cases in which girls in the age group from 0 to 14 years were supplied with this jewel, and the ability of biological reproduction is out of question in this group. 8. Since the occurrence of more than one S-ended rings is linked to those in the reproductive age, the most probable inference is that, beside the financial factor, the quantitative side of its use may have been directed by rules and customs of decoration depending on age. The fact that we noticed a similar phenomenon in the case of beads, corroborates our thesis. We known that the problem is a very complicated one. However, presenting the sociografical outlines of a rural peasants' community of the eleventh century, we cannot leave an interesting problem, put forward by concrete data in the course of our investigation, unnoticed. We did not want to solve the problem, only to propound it; we tried to find ways of explanation, selecting some of them and pushing our argument to the extreme, in order to attrac* the interest of research on the question. In the following we shall analyze the relation between the number, the sex and the age group (Table 24). The division into age groups inside the own sex bears out the inference that more than 2 S-ended hair rings were given only to women in the reproductive age, among them mainly to those deceased between 15 and 30 years of age. The person endowed with 7 rings (grave no. 196) was 42 years old, so she belonged still into the reproductive age; her child of 0.1 years was buried with her. Now we analyze the situation of the S-ended hair rings around the skull according to the division into age groups. We refrain from dealing with the question, whether they were worn in the plait, suspended in the hair at the temple, or applied to the female headdress, since it was defined from case to case by the extremely careful excavations and observations made
