Wolf Mária: A borsodi földvár. Egy államalapítás kori megyeszékhelyünk kutatása - Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén megye régészeti emlékei 10. (Budapest - Miskolc - Szeged, 2019)
Irodalom- és rövidítésjegyzék
392 an accidental fire. That none of the ramparts were completely burned offers further support of this. The ramparts could only have caught fire if the wooden structure had not been covered in earth. Therefore, counts’ castles should be viewed not as earthen ramparts reinforced with a wooden structure, but rather the opposite: wooden castles filled to a certain level with earth. As we know, György Györffy believed that some of the counts’ castles were built in the 10th century as centres for clan leaders. During excavation of Borsod Hillfort, however, it became apparent that, although the area was inhabited in the 10th century, it was not a hillfort but rather an open settlement; thus, there is no doubt that the count’s castle built in the 11th century was preceded by a 10lh-century elite centre. The two centres, however, shared only a common location; otherwise we have found no connection between them. A similar situation was observed not only here but in numerous other hillforts in, for example, Győr, Sopron, Bihar, Szabolcs and Hont. We can thus honour the memory of György Györffy by stating that he was correct in certain respects: several counts’ castles were preceded by 10Ih-century centres, although these were not castles. We have mentioned that Borsod Castle was inhabited in the 11th and 12th centuries. This has proven true for several other counts’ castles. In addition to simple houses, more important buildings also stood within the castle area. Artefacts have shown that people from all echelons of society lived within the castle walls, and merchants also passed through. The buildings excavated thus far suggest that counts’ castles were probably not merely inhabited but were centres of heightened importance during the period. It is common knowledge that the Hungarian word for town (város) is derived from the word for castle (vár). Therefore, we are justified in considering counts’ castles as the earliest Hungarian towns. Gyula Kristó held that these towns were an Asian, nomadic type, while András Kubinyi compared them to 10th- 11th century centres in German territories. Questions about the period of obsolescence of counts’ castles can also be traced back to Györffy’s theory. Although in recent times, his theory has received a lot of criticism, everyone agrees that counts’ castles lost their importance during the Mongol invasion, which proved their outmodedness. István Bóna immediately voiced the opinion that only those castles survived the Mongol invasion whose ramparts had been heightened and fortified with stone walls. Written sources, on the other hand, demonstrate that the counts’ castles and their soldiers valiantly held on. The main centres of resistance against the Mongols were largely old-style counts’ castles; very few were the new types of private castles. Centres of local defence were thus simultaneously centres in the castle system. In research on this subject, the uniform view has been that the military organization in royal counties during the period of the Mongol invasion and, in fact, for a long time afterwards operated in the old form. This is corroborated by military events in the second half of the 13th century. Combatants from several county seats participated in these, including, as we have seen, soldiers from Borsod, too. In all likelihood, early county seats did not lose their significance because of their military obsolescence. Instead economic and social processes - the awarding of castle lands, the struggles between serfs and castle residents to achieve noble ranks, trade routes, and changes in market networks - played a role in their decline. In the interior of the castle, on a smaller elevation on the northern hill, we unearthed the foundations of a large church terminating in a rounded sanctuary. No signs of this structure could be seen on the surface. The foundation stones had largely been exploited and only the filling of gravel, mortar and lime mixed with earth was found. The original foundation of irregularly shaped, hard limestone laid with mortar survived only at the two comers of the church and in two small sections in the sanctuary. The width of the foundation trench is 80 centimetres for the side walls, 90 centimetres in the sanctuary, and more than one metre for the western terminating wall. The depth of the foundation trenches also varied from 65 to 80 centimetres in the undisturbed subsoil. A section of the western terminating wall was destroyed by recent digging. In the eastern third of the church, two piers embedded in the side walls and, along the same axis, another two in the interior came to light. A pair of piers embedded in the wall were found near the western terminating wall, too. These piers probably supported the gallery. The entire exterior length of the church is 18 metres, while the interior length is 16 metres. The exterior width is on average 10, while the interior is 8 metres. The sanctuary is nearly a semi-circle, with an exterior radius of 2.9 and an interior radius of 2.2 metres. We found no evidence of remodelling or expansion. Several irregularities in the ground plan were found, which is not unusual in Romanesque buildings. In this case, the irregularities are serious enough that they would have been visible in the walls of the superstructure too. We have no information about the walls of the superstructure, but we found fragments of ashlars carved from sandstone in several locations in the area of the castle. Presumably these ashlars were used to construct the walls or perhaps to cover them. Next to the foundation trench of the northern side wall, some debris was found that was likely the remains of the collapsed northern wall. When this was excavated, a stirrup with copper wire inlay and a loop moulded at its shoulder, and a silver denarius minted by King Solomon (1063-1074) came to light. Analogies indicate the stirrup dates to the second half of the 11th century; the coin and the stirrup together therefore demonstrate that the church was standing during this period.
