Balogh Csilla – P. Fischl Klára: Felgyő, Ürmös-tanya. A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Monumenta Archeologica 1. (Szeged, 2010)
The Bronze Age settlement and cemetery at Felgyő
116 P. FISCHL Klára - GUBA Szilvia BURIAL RITES IN THE FELGYO CEMETERY The southern and eastern boundary of the Bronze Age cemetery can be securely established from the reconstructed cemetery plan (BALOGH P. FISCHL 2010, Fig. 44). In the west, the narrow trench opened on the other side of the road yielded two urn burials and a crouched inhumation burial, the latter probably also dating from the Bronze Age. It seems likely that this area was also used for burial during the Bronze Age (BALOGH-P. FISCHL 2010a). The cemetery's northern boundary is uncertain. Nothing is known about the archaeological features uncovered in Trench V of the 1971 campaign, the northernmost trench. The field diary of the 1971 campaign describes the finds brought to light from the upper layer of Trench V with the remark that the trench was not investigated further. At the same time, the next page of the diary, recording the events of the day before the conclusion of the excavation, mentions that the "graves and pits of Trench V were uncovered". These can be identified with Graves 118 and 123, both Avar burials, and pits a-c, suggesting that urn burials had not been found in the trench and that the cemetery had not extended to this area. Any analysis of the funerary practices in the case of the inurned burials runs into difficulties owing to the imprecise nature of the data at our disposal. We took the descriptions contained in the field diary as our starting point because the description of the burials and the inventoried grave goods were often at variance with each other. The grave goods became mixed up in a few cases by the time they were inventoried and the descriptions in the field diary seemed more reliable. The inventoried finds include the grave furnishings of nineteen burials which, however, are not even mentioned in the field diary:" in these cases, we could obviously only work with the surviving grave goods. Some graves were severely disturbed by ploughing and no more than small fragments remained of the grave pottery, usually only the base fragment of the urn. 2 3 The description of a few graves in the field diary is very laconic" and the contradictions between the field diary and the surviving artefacts do not permit the reconstruction of the funerary rite. The most heavily disturbed, ploughed-up graves lay in the middle of the area north of the dirt track leading to the farmstead. Mentioned in the description of Grave 6, an inurned burial, is that "in Trench 4, the position of the pottery fragments indicated that the surface had been heavily eroded since the Bronze Age. Only graves dug to an exceptional depth may have survived to the north." The same observation is made in the description of Grave 8: "the surface is strongly eroded." Describing a grave patch devoid of any finds in Trench 7 of the 1961 campaign, the field diary notes that it was "wholly barren and that the urn (?) in it had probably been destroyed by the plough." It seems likely that several graves had perished in this area. Virtually nothing is known about four of the 72 graves,"^ while 36 of the remaining 68 graves cannot be evaluated (or only tentatively) owing to the reasons described in the above. Eleven burials conformed to the general Vatya custom of depositing an urn, a cup in the urn and a cover bowl over the urn in the grave. 2' 1 Graves 39 and 49 can be assigned to this category in the light of the inventoried grave pottery, rather than their description in the field diary. Although not described in the field diary, the inventoried grave pottery of Graves 54, 62 and 66 comprised vessels of this type. It would appear that this was the most common vessel combination in the Felgyő cemetery. Graves 36, 38 and 42 contained an urn only and an urn was the single inventoried find from Graves 31 and 55. The vessel used as an urn in Graves 38 and 42 was a pot type vessel. Pots used as urns also occur in the traditional vessel trio of urn, bowl and cup (Graves 39, 44 and 47), or in combination with a cup (Graves 43 and 56) or a bowl (Grave 34). In the latter two cases, however, no description of the grave was available and we could thus only rely on the inventoried finds. It would appear that pots were used as urns in ten of the 68 graves with a known grave inventory. The pot inventoried as coming from an inurned burial (Fig. 43. 1) can probably also be assigned here. Pot fragments were sometimes used for covering the mouth of the urn. A divergence from the general urn, bowl and cup trio could be noted in the following graves: Graves 43, 56 and 64 contained an urn and a cup, while a small bowl was substituted for the cup in Grave 46. Although the urn did not contain a small vessel, its mouth was covered with a bowl in eight graves." The same holds true for Graves 34 and 65, whose description is known only from the inventory book. The finds inventoried from Grave 30 allow the reconstruction of an urn and the fragment of a pot used for covering the urn. The rather uncertain grave goods from Grave 20 can perhaps also be assigned to this category. The proportion of graves containing the classical grave vessel trio of urn, bowl and cup, of graves containing a pot functioning as an urn and graves containing an urn and a bowl or an urn and a pottery sherd for covering the urn is roughly the same. An additional vessel was deposited in the grave in seven cases. The classical practice, more widespread in the later Vatya period, was the placement of a small cup in the urn and the double covering of the urn with a smaller bowl or larger sherd on the urn and a larger bowl placed upside down on top. This practice could be noted in Graves 16 and 35, as well as in Grave 63, according to the description in the inventory book. The urn in Grave 56/1971 was covered with two bowls (Figs 34-35); however, the burial did not contain a cup. Three cups were deposited in the urn in Grave 52, which can perhaps be explained by the fact that the urn betrays the influence of the Encrusted Pottery culture, whose deceased were buried with a high number of pottery vessels. In the lack of archaeometric analyses, it is not known whether the urn was an import or a locally made vessel. We know that smaller groups from Transdanubia settled on the eastern fringes of the Vatya distribution during the second half of the Middle Bronze Age (although the possible presence of other groups cannot be demonstrated in the find material from Felgyő). The urn echoing traits of the Encrusted Pottery culture and the higher number of grave goods can perhaps be interpreted as the finds of an immigrant individual interred according to the Vatya rite. 22 Graves 12, 29-32, 34, 50-52, 54-56 and the graves uncovered during the 1972 season (Graves 60-66). 23 Graves 6-11, 17, 21, 33 and 57. 24 Graves 18-20, 26, 45, 55/1971 and 58. 25 The inurned burial on the other side of the Szeged road, Graves 62 and 63 (drawn twice) and the unexcavated burial in Trench XXI of the 1975 campaign. 26 Graves 3, 5, 24, 27, 40-41, 44 and 47-48. 27 Graves 4, 13-15, 25, 28, 37 and 59.
