Wolf Mária: A borsodi földvár. Egy államalapítás kori megyeszékhelyünk kutatása - Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén megye régészeti emlékei 10. (Budapest - Miskolc - Szeged, 2019)
Irodalom- és rövidítésjegyzék
394 The cemetery finds were without exception Árpád Age; the hoop jewellery can be dated to between the 11th and 13lh centuries. One of the earliest finds is a lyreshaped, bronze buckle decorated with niello, found in burial site 67. Péter Németh and earlier researchers following in his footsteps posited that this type was Baltic in origin and one of them could be linked to a Rus-Varangian warrior serving in the royal court, who brought it, as a personal possession, to the Carpathian Basin in the 10th century. If we collect analogies to the buckles, however, we find that similar items were used in the second half of the 11th century and the beginning of the 12th century. Presumably, the Hungarian buckles were not earlier than these. Furthermore, it is far more likely that the buckles arrived from the steppes, perhaps from Pecheneg circles, rather than the Baltic region. We can also imagine that the items were commercial goods brought to distant lands in Europe. The skeletal remains of 101 individuals were collected in the excavated cemetery sections. The population was clearly Europid and did not differ from the Árpád- Age inhabitants of the North Hungarian Mountains. The only exception was the male with the lyre-shaped, bronze buckle with niello decoration in burial 67. From an anthropological perspective, this individual differs significantly from the other males and was presumably of foreign, eastern origins. During an examination of the bones, several fractures were registered, which most often occurred when the individual defended himself from strikes to the head. Those interred in the cemetery, therefore, could not have been living in peaceful circumstances. The balanced proportion of men to women and the equal number of child and adult graves clearly show that the population did not consist primarily of men, as part of a military retinue or garrison, but rather of family units. Nevertheless, the injuries indicate the inhabitants were engaged in military exploits. There is no question, therefore, that the church outside Borsod Hillfort’s ramparts belonged to the castle population; they and their families were laid to rest in the graves unearthed thus far in the surrounding cemetery. This is supported not only by the conclusions of the anthropological examinations discussed above but also by the fact that, during this same time, another cemetery belonging to the local community existed adjacent to that surrounding the church. Evidence of this is two silver ribbed hair rings ending in an S shape and a ring of three twisted silver wires, hammered at the end, which came to light about 500 metres to the southeast of the excavated section of the church and cemetery. According to our present knowledge, these finds could not have dated to a period earlier than the end of the 11th century. We can draw no other conclusion than that the cemetery around the church and the row cemetery in Borsod were in simultaneous use at least at the end of the 11th century. Therefore, the abandonment of the row cemetery does not coincide with the construction of the church as had once been firmly believed. Recent research, however, has shown that Borsod was not the only place where two types of cemeteries existed adjacent to one another. But in our case, the hypothesis has not proven true that in the centres, at the end of the 10th century, neither the elites, nor servants, nor more destitute members of society received pagan burials. Far more likely is György Györffy’s idea that “castle warriors, as oppressors who were strangers to the common folk, could not have been buried in cemeteries that preserved the local population’s pagan rites. As the ‘policemen’ overseeing the introduction of the Christian order, very early on they would have been buried according to Christian customs. In all likelihood, the practice of burying individuals without horses began with them.” It is true that in Borsod, what Györfify hypothesized occurred one century later. That people of foreign origins, probably Pechenegs, lived inside the count’s castle is demonstrated by the lyreshaped buckle and, in addition to our observations about its wearer, by two other items. One is a stirrup found next to the deanery church. The type of loop forged in its shoulder originated in Central Asia. In Eastern Europe, this form was unknown until the 1 llh century, although its pear-shaped version has appeared among Conquest-Period finds. A typological offshoot of this was the round variation with narrow tread, which had become a widespread stirrup type in the 11th-12th centuries in the steppe region of southern Russia. This was known as the ‘Pecheneg-Uz Chomi Klobuky (black hood)’ type. Their first appearance in archaeological material in Hungary - and corroborated by historical data - is certainly linked to the settling of the Pechenegs. Another item is a stiff, unjointed bit, which was found sporadically. The emergence of this type dates to the 10th- 11th centuries; its spread is clearly linked to the Pechenegs, Uzes or the ‘Black Hood’ group, not only because of typological considerations and the age of the artefacts, but also because Pecheneg groups had certainly settled around Borsod Hillfort. Support for this latter information is provided by two villages located to the north and the south that to this day bear the name Besenyő (Pecheneg). Researchers have uniformly agreed this form of name giving indicates isolated Pecheneg settlements in Hungarian environs, of which a portion, especially those villages near counts’ castles, were established at the time the Hungarian state was founded. The Pechenegs settled in Hungary in the largest wave after 1055. All of this makes it very likely that Pecheneg warriors who had just taken up residence were among the warriors in Borsod Hillfort at the end of the 11th century. As the sons of a population that had joined the Hungarians, they would have had to convert to Christianity along with the Hungarian elite and warrior layer of
