Csengeri Piroska - Tóth Arnold (szerk.): A Herman Ottó Múzeum évkönyve 55. (Miskolc, 2016)

Régészet - B. Hellerbrandt Magdolna: A Gáva-kultúra települése Köröm-Kápolna-dombon

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B. Hellebrandt Magdolna

A SETTLEMENT OF THE GÁVA CULTURE ON KÖRÖM-KÁPOLNA-DOMB

Keywords: Late Bronze Age, fortified settlement, houses, pits, burial

Köröm-Kápolna-domb is an elevation in the floodplain area of the Sajó stream. This is one of the alluvial fan zones of the Sajó (FRISNYÁK 2000, 8).

Research history. A rescue excavation was conducted on the southern slopes of the hill by Tibor Kemenczei in 1969. At that time, 15 features were unearthed (Fig. 5. 1—2). Kemenczei suggested that a population associated with the Gáva Culture habited the area in the Late Bronze Age (KEMENCZEI 1984, 62, Plates CXXXV-CXLV). Kemenczei called the site Rákóczi-domb, this name is, however, wrong, as the elevation close to Köröm appears as Kápolna-domb on both the 1:50,000 and the 1:10,000 scale maps, while Rákóczi-domb is situated next to Girincs (Fig. 1. 1, 3).

A sewage treatment plant was built on the hill in 1996. During the construction the upper layer of the soil was removed (Fig. 2). The soil contained pottery and bone fragments, however, archaeological features were absent. A second rescue excavation took place between June 18 and November 15,1996. 85 features associated with the Gáva Culture were brought to light, including 5 houses, 20 pits and 11 clay extracting pits; two of the latter may have been used earlier as houses. 34 burials dated to the Period of the Árpád Dynasty were unearthed as well. The material is registered and stored in the Archaeological Collection of the Herman Ottó Museum, under the inventory numbers 99.36.1—96.36.4244.

Zsolt Gallina conducted a third rescue excavation on April 22—26, 2014. This time, 69 archaeological features (stratigraphic units, SNR) were documented, including 39 Late Bronze Age pits and seven Árpád Period graves.

The hill as a fortification. When building no. 1 of the sewage plant was founded during the 1996 excavations, the cross- section of a pit was observed. The dark, black filling extended into the removed upper surface layer (Fig. 3). This destruction layer appeared at a number of places during the excavation, e.g. at the features no. 13 (Fig. 9. 1—2) and no. 20 (Fig. 13.

3), which were identified as houses. The spots of the archaeological features appeared under the destruction layer.

It is uncertain how the thin soil layer of ca. 1 m, which yielded a few objects, formed on top of the destroyed settlement. This is also of interest from an excavation technological point of view. It is certain that grapes used to be cultivated on Kápolna-domb. Ploughing may have turned the soil over down to a depth of 120 cm, which explains why the artefacts came to the surface. The hydrological map of the area, on which the buildings to be constructed were marked, shows that the hill is narrow on the western side and the slope becomes steeper towards the edge (Fig. 4). The 1:50,000 scale map (Fig. 1. 1) also shows that the hill is surrounded by a rampart with an omega-shaped outline. The outline of this rampart is still perceptible in the southeastern area of the ploughland, and today the hill is encircled by a green, grassy stripe (Fig. 5. 1-3), identified as a trench which is deeper than the remains of the rampart. The Sajó stream also eroded the rampart in the past 3,000 years.

Köröm-Kápolna-domb is ca. 5 m high today. One meter of the upper soil layer was removed during excavation. According to the height data specified on the maps, the original height of the elevation must have been 6.5—7 m. The Map of the First Military Survey, prepared in 1784 and now stored in the Museum and Map Colletion of Military History (ref. no. XXII—15), shows that the Sajó stream flowed right in the vicinity of the village of Muhi. However, there was another streambed that branched out from the Sajó somewhat north of Muhi (Fig. 6), and meandered to the east on the left side of the Sajó, almost perpendicularly to the main stream. In the middle of the floodplain area it bifurcated. Both branches crossed the floodplain; they surrounded the hill, and then flowed into the marsh in a southeastern direction. This streambed is certainly artificial, signified by the immediate and almost right-angled turn it takes at Köröm. It must have aimed to channel water into the omega-shaped trench of Kápolna-domb, which was otherwise open to the west (Fig. 1. 1). The zone between the two branches may have been used to pasture animals as in a kind of natural sheepfold.

According to the comprehensive map (Fig. 4), the whole area of the hill was habited. On the western fringe, feature no. 85, and on the northern, features no. 69—70, 72—73 and 75—77 were brought to light. Feature no. 1 was unearthed on the northern edge of the dig area, while features no. 45—52 on the northeastern fringe, and features no. 71, 74, and 84 on the southern edge. It was concluded that in a difficult period of the settlement’s life, the hilltop was fortified with a rampart and, presumably, with a wattle-and-daub wall with a palisade on the top, similarly to the reconstructed fortification at Teleac beside the Maros River (VASILIEV—ALDEA—CIUGUDEAN 1991, Fig. 30. 13; Fig. 33. 10). After the settlement had been destroyed, this fortified upper wall collapsed into the water trench and was partly swept into the fort by the water. Later, when land cultivation started on the hill, the remaining wall parts must have been leveled, and the ancient settlement was covered with a new layer of soil, keeping the spots of archaeological features underneath from appearing on the surface.