Wolf Mária: A borsodi földvár. Egy államalapítás kori megyeszékhelyünk kutatása - Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén megye régészeti emlékei 10. (Budapest - Miskolc - Szeged, 2019)
Irodalom- és rövidítésjegyzék
390 strongly inclined in a north-northeastern direction. The deeper the cut went into the rampart, the more the outer edge of the dense lattice structure turned inwards. Beneath the rampart, we found several features of the 10th century settlement. Further rampart cross-sections did not reveal a dense lattice structure. In one location (section 49), however, we clearly observed that the rampart had been built over two houses from the 10Ih-century settlement. Thirty to seventy centimetres of earth filled the space between the houses and the rampart. A lot of artefacts were excavated from the rampart. Aside from a few prehistoric fragments, the objects found came from the settlement that had preceded the castle. As is apparent from the above information, two construction periods can be observed in both complete rampart cross-sections. In the first period a dense lattice structure was built. This type of structure is unknown in those early Hungarian castles that have thus far been excavated. A spatial analysis of the results of soil layer sampling and excavation of the inner hillfort shed light on the function of the lattice structure. We discovered that the two depressions that cut through the castle hill, which we had noticed when excavating the 10,h-century settlement, were not manmade, but rather were natural formations. Today the hill looks uniform, but originally it had two small elevations. Here the waters of the Bódva once eroded not only the northern and eastern sides of the foothills, but also the southern and western sides as well as the hill tops. This explains how three smaller hills were created in close proximity to one another, two of which were artificially joined together to form the area for Borsod Hillfort. The northern and southern hills were separated by two depressions, ditches and a plateau. One hundred metres from these two hills, to the southwest is a third, upon which the church was built. This church never belonged to the castle, and although the groove between the ramparts and the church hill was artificially deepened during the past centuries, it was originally a natural formation. As we have seen, the hillfort’s location is ideal from a strategic standpoint. Individually the three smaller hills, in their natural form, were not suitable for castle building. They were all too small. Moreover, as we move from north to south the altitude of the hills gradually decreased. Thus the idea of linking the Bódva and the hills closest to each other may have been obvious. The construction of the hillfort therefore had to begin with filling in the 3- to 3.5-metre ditch between the hills. The settling of the fill must have presented fewer problems in the hillfort interior but serious difficulties at the ramparts. This is why it may have been necessary to construct a dense lattice structure above the fill. Therefore, I believe the lattice structure in Borsod may have served as the foundation for the compartmentalized rampart. The size of the beams found in the lattice structure support this hypothesis, but so too does the lattice structure itself, with the placement of beams very close to one another in alternating directions. A foundation was necessary in those areas where the two separate hills were joined. Obviously, the aim was to prevent the ramparts from sinking where the depressions ended. In building the ramparts, soil of varying quality was used. The finds unearthed make it clear that a good portion of the soil came from the village that had preceded the ramparts. The gravel, loose black earth, red clay and layers of mud found in the rampart, however, demonstrate that soil was brought not only from elsewhere but presumably from nearby locations, from the Bódva riverbed and the swamplands around the hillfort. When the two hills were joined, 4200 metres3 of earth were used to fill the depressions, while 16,500 metres3 were needed for the, on average, 5-metre-high rampart, with its circumference of 430 metres. As we have seen, various sizes of wood - the other fundamental component of the rampart - were used. Unprocessed wood was used in the lattice, while processed, smoothed wood was incorporated into the compartmentalized rampart. The tiny twigs, leaves and woodchips found in the rampart indicate that the wood was processed at the site, during the construction of the rampart. An examination of the wood shows that the material was sessile oak, a tree typically found in the nearby forest. The beams were not formed from old, thick trunks, but rather from approximately 50-year-old trees. For the 430-metre-long, 5-metre-high hillfort wall, 2270 metres3 of wood were necessary. Approximately 630 metres3 of wood were used to construct the part of the ditches beneath the ramparts. To erect the hillfort, fill in the depressions and build the ramparts and their foundations, one hundred people would have been needed for 250 days. If we also calculate that the fill in the ditches required three to six months to settle, then the construction probably took 370 days. In other words, Borsod Hillfort was built in about one year. The cross-section of the rampart demonstrates that, in contrast to earlier opinions, Borsod Hillfort did not have ancient or Slav precursors. With very few exceptions, all the artefacts found in the compartmentalized ramparts and the lattice structure originated from the 10,h-century settlement. Carbon 14 analysis and finds providing information about dates suggest the village was destroyed in the last quarter of the 10th century, in the 970s-980s. This date is also the terminus post quem for the construction of the hillfort; in other words, the hillfort was only built after this. The thick, 30- to 70-centimetre layer of soil between the rampart and the houses would certainly have needed time to accumulate. The formation of soil is a complicated process in which the environment, climate, weather and ground
