Janus Pannonius Múzeum Évkönyve 43 (1998)( Pécs, 1999)
Régészet - Gábor Olivér: Későantik sírok Mágocson
122 A JANUS PANNONIUS MÚZEUM ÉVKÖNYVE 43 (1998) Late Antique Graves from Mágocs Olivér GÁBOR In 1974 a rescue excavation by Valéria Kováts unearthed the graves of a man, a woman and a child with two horse skeletons at 90 Ady Street. 400 m from this site fragments of mosaic and the coins of Valentinian I and Valens were found by the archaeologist. In 1997, during another rescue excavation Gábor Kárpáti and Olivér Gábor excavated a fragment of the floor of an old Christian burial vault with painted wall at Templom square. The burial vault seems to be earlier than the other site. It was disturbed, the finds were mixed with objects of following ages. There were no figurai ornaments, in the painted plasters, however they can be linked to the painted old Christian frescoes. The stump of the inner wall of the funeral chest remained on the floor, which shows an east-west orientation. A punched tile was put on the base of the chest, at the waist area. Above it 12 bronze coins of Constans and Constantius П were found. The coins, representing the money circulation of an age, were put into the grave around 360-370. Since we have no information on how many people were buried into the same chest throughout the decades, the building of the vault can precede this date with one or two decades. More graves were not found at Templomdomb. The graves from Ady Street are a few decades older and can be dated to around 400. Their finds link it to the Csákvár type cemeteries. While combs, iron buckles, rings and pearls cannot distinguish an ethnic identity, the funeral ritual with stone slab, the onion-shape knobbed fibula with the potteries of grave 1, and the buckle-ring of grave 3 suggest Roman tradition. The shepherd's tools of grave 1, the knife in the grave, the buckles of women, and the polyeder earring of grave 3 are rare Roman phenomena, but common with barbarians. Even if it cannot be proved that foederati population moved to this area, the cemeteries of Baranya County during the fourth century show a change in the lifestyle: a shift from agriculture to animal husbandry and shepherding. The warlike historical background and the shepherd's tools in graves support this idea. Based on the mosaic fragments and on the wealth of the builders of the vault, we can suppose the existence of a Roman villa around this territory. The copper plate of Minerva, found at the nearby Szőlőhegy, can also be linked to this settlement. The connection between the graves of Ady Street, dated to a few decades earlier and the earlier settlement (villa?) is not clear, but it is certain that a settlement existed nearby around 400 AD.
