Wolf Mária: A borsodi földvár. Egy államalapítás kori megyeszékhelyünk kutatása - Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén megye régészeti emlékei 10. (Budapest - Miskolc - Szeged, 2019)
Irodalom- és rövidítésjegyzék
391 cover all play a role. And although we only have approximate estimations of the rates, the data we have at present suggest the soil in the case of Borsod Hillfort would likely have required a minimum of 50 years +/- 20 to accumulate. We have no direct information about the date of the castle’s construction. We do have indirect evidence, however, that indicates the hillfort was probably built in the first half of the 11th century, between 1020 and 1050. In the interior area of the hillfort, we found several simple houses, ovens and fireplaces. Furthermore, the remains of a wall consisting of stone and mortar, belonging to a more important building, was discovered. Artefacts from the archaeological features and area of the hillfort - ceramics, sickles, spurs, sword pommel, dagger, double pendants, lyre-shaped buckle, rings, etc. — can be dated to the early part of the Árpád Age, to the 11th-12th centuries. We can establish that the area of Borsod Hillfort was inhabited from the second half of the 11th century to the middle or second third of the 12th century. However, object types characteristic of the second half of the Árpád Age — white ceramics, vessels painted red, sickles with bent necks, and rotating rowel spurs — were not found. In all likelihood, at the end of the 12th century, the settlement was located outside the hillfort. The excavated buildings do not provide an outline of the entire structure of the settlement. However, it is still perfectly clear that several houses stood in the hillfort at around the same time. The houses were built on the surface and included loghouses, post-framed houses with ground sills, and wattle and daub houses as well as those with stone foundations. However, exterior ovens and pits, which can be considered common in villages of the period, also came to light. Next to simpler houses, which have already been discussed, on the northwestern side of the hillfort interior, near the rampart, a more important building made of stone and mortar was erected. Presumably this was the residence of the count. Nearly 100 metres to the south, in an 8 X 15-metre area, several blacksmith hearths were found. We can therefore posit that the blacksmith workshop was located here. We can state unequivocally that the edifices of the settlement in the castle area were abandoned. No layers consistent with destruction were found; therefore, this settlement did not come to end because of war. More likely the village ‘outgrew’ the castle hill. In light of recent research, such as the excavation of Borsod, the notion that the castles of counts were places of refuge, that people resided there only temporarily during episodes of warfare, does not hold up. Buildings that appear in charters, such as the counts’ residences, prisons, storehouses, etc, would have been located outside the castles. Borsod Hillfort cropped up rather late in written sources. The castle’s count (ispán) appeared first in 1108, before the castle itself, which was first mentioned by Anonymus, who claimed it was built at the time of the Hungarian Conquest by Chieftain Bors. It is first commemorated in an official document in 1194. During the 13th century, the castle’s serfs, officials, and residents all appeared in many charters. The awarding of castle lands was also dealt with in charters. In 1261 and 1282, the king declared that Borsod Castle was his own. In addition, the serfs of Borsod participated in the military campaign of 1275. In 1332, Borsod village was cited as being privately owned, while in 1334 only the rampart was mentioned, referred to as a hillfort. Methodical investigation of 10th-11th century hillforts began outside the present-day borders of Hungary in the years following World War II. Politics, however, interfered with an accurate evaluation of the research results. Hungarian research on the subject began rather late, initially in a largely haphazard fashion, as a by-product of research on prehistoric hillforts. György Györffy’s elaborate theory concerning hillforts had a powerful impact. In discussing the origins and formation of counties in the period of St. Stephen, he stated that hillforts may have served as county centres, and among these, several had been built as lodgings for distinguished clan chiefs in the 10th century. A portion of these castles were requisitioned by King Stephen, who had them furnished as the first centres of his state, as county seats that oversaw government administration and religious and secular affairs. Another portion of the hillforts, however, were built expressly as county centres in the early 11th century, during the period in which the Hungarian state was founded. Györffy assigned particular significance to the border castles and their adjacent border counties built along the important military roads leading out of the country. In his view, these castles ceded their importance to stone castles following the Mongol invasion. In the 1960s and 1970s, archaeological excavations of several county seats began. Among these, Borsod, located in present-day Hungary, was the last site that had not been built on and could thus be freely investigated. One of the most important questions the excavations shed light on was when Hungarian hillforts with timber-earth structures were built and whether they were constructed in 10lh-century Hungary. Based on results thus far, the answer to this latter question is clearly no. We only have reliable data about Hungarian hillfort architecture from the early 11th century; therefore, claims that a portion of Hungarian hillforts were built in the 10th century are only hypotheses. A contentious debate erupted over one of the important observations made of the rampart cross-section: part of the ramparts had been burned red. Some researchers postulated that in order to strengthen the structure, the ramparts had been intentionally lit on fire. Excavations thus far, however, have not corroborated this idea. The rampart must have burned ‘naturally’ during a siege or
