A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Studia Historiae Literarum et Artium, 1. (Szeged, 1997)

Előszó

Foreword After 1956, the yearbooks of Hungarian museums sprang up like mushrooms (quickly, in great numbers and by themselves). One of these yearbooks was published by the Ferenc Móra Museum as a periodical on the archaeology, ethnography, local history and natural history of the central Karpathian Basin, a region which has an importance even from a larger, Central European perspective. At the time of their launching, these yearbooks - containing studies of regional importance or findings concerning their region - were published under the auspices of either a large regional center or a regional museum with well-established, illustrious traditions, and their periodical status was later legalized by statutory order, because these miscellaneous publications had made important contributions to the academic activity going on in their respective regions and gained distinction for them. Thus the Ferenc Móra Museum published studies concerning County Csongrád and, in addition to this, continued to develop the well-established archaeological traditions of the Archaeological Institute of the University of Szeged. Unlike in the pre-war years, the Museum undertook teaching activity, too, and has been offering courses for students in archaeology at the University ever since. Almost forty years after the launching of the yearbook, it had to be admitted that the former scope of this periodical had become too narrow, too limited for our new purposes, as the Museum managed to come up to modern standards during the past decades and, therefore, a change of form and arrangement was urgently needed. This concerned the length and the contents of our publication, as well as the technical conditions of production, the availability and the marketing. We do not want to conceal that the periodical is intended for circulation in Hungary and abroad, mainly through sale and profitable exchange, in order that the Museum may develop its library collection, and provide it with up-to-date information. For this reason, a decision was taken to divide the yearbook into 5 sections. These are the following: Régészeti Tanulmányok - Studia Archaeologica Történeti Tanulmányok - Studia Historica Néprajzi Tanulmányok - Studia Ethnographica Természettudományi Tanulmányok - Studia Biologica Irodalom- és Művészettörténeti Tanulmányok - Studia Históriáé Literarum et Artium In future, the frequency of publication of the former yearbook will not be annual, as before, but irregular, and it will come out whenever the Museum will be in the position to present new achievements and findings by its staff to the profession. It must be mentioned, however, that the chances of publishing our new findings will be strongly influenced by the financial conditions and resources of the Museum. DR.OTTÓ TROGMAYER 6