Cseri Miklós – Tárnoki Judit szerk.: Népi építészet a Kárpát-medencében a honfoglalástól a 18. századig – A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok közleményei 58. (2001)
Takács Miklós: Az Árpád-kori köznépi lakóház kutatása, különös tekintettel az 1990-es évekre
necessary to understand the way of raising problems in the 1990s. As a consequence, the research of Hungarian medieval dwellings of the common folk carried out in the last decade of the 20 th century can be considered in many aspects as belonging rather to the MÉRI-period. Following other aspects on the other hand, both, the period between 1970 and 1990 and the 1990s have to be considered as two different periods. We can call the last decade as the time of extensive finds rescue. (Just to make the huge proportions of the rescue work perceivable, we put together a list of extensive finds rescue works where also settlements from the Arpadian age were discovered.) In the 1990s the demand was raised to rescue the whole archaeological site with making use of strong machines. These extensive activities of finds rescue can be considered as a necessary evil, since the removing of earth with a machine and the short time available caused a serious loss of observation opportunities. Still, this extensive finds rescue is the less evil, because if we would not have even this possibility, sites would be destroyed by construction work and no information could be collected at all from a destroyed site. Although it is a good thing that the number of excavations was increasing in the nineties, it is less joyful that the number of scientific treatments did not increase at all. Furthermore, the earlier practice was carried on, which means that the results of the completed work was published only in form of preliminary reports. 3. Questions of interpretation At the beginning of this chapter we want to disclaim those critiques, which challenge even the mere existence of the dug-outs, furthermore, we deal with the proportion of the houses with sunk floor. We are of the opinion that far more houses were built on the surface during the Arpadian age than we can establish them with our excavations methods. The number of houses with flooring on the surface, however, didn't exceed - and may-be didn't even approach - the number of dug-outs in the average village. This means that in spite of the houses built on the surface and in spite of the use of yurts, the dug-out with undivided inner space played an important role in the dwelling culture of the common folk in the Arpadian age. According to a sceptical view, the present research cannot contribute much more to the description of "average" dug-outs provided by István MÉRI, since the basics are known and only the number of variants can be increased. A different approach claims that the solutions of the details constitute the most important points for the analysis. This means, that the present and future tasks of the research is to offer a description of the dug-out in the Arpadian age appropriately differentiated in space and time. This should push into the background the method, which, as a result of compiling all available data, describes an "average" house, treating chronological and regional differences only as oddities. The idea is supported by the extensive finds rescue because dug-outs are unearthed by tens, in which the details are quite different. Most data proving the diversity are related to the ovens. It is without doubt that we find the biggest variousness among the ovens in the houses of the first third of the Arpadian age. This is mainly due to the fact that the stone oven is hardly traceable in the Carpathian basin after the end of the 11 th century: they rather remained in areas rich in stone, like the bend of the Danube. If we want to check the place of the heating device in the house, we find that the best examples are attached again to the oven. The most examples, where the entrance is near the oven, at the short side of the house, have been identified in the Kisalföld (Little Plain). Most of these examples date from the 10 th-11 th century but we know a few cases from a later time (fig. 3). Another source of variety is found in the supports carrying the roof, even if the roofs of the undivided dug-outs are normally carried by two Y-shaped uprights erected on the middle-line between the two short sides. We can mention from the structural solutions the middle shaft between the two Y-shaped uprights, or the dug-out having four, resp. six holes for posts. 4. Prospects As a result of the big excavation fever in the 1990s, the number of the published data remained very small. Therefore, it is the common task and responsibility of the researchers carrying out the finds rescue and of the younger generation of scientists to publish the data as soon as possible. It would be very helpful, besides the improvement of the technical conditions, if the professional public would not consider the publication of data a lesser performance as the interpretation. We most not forget that in countries westwards from the former iron curtain, where archaeology was not forced to serve the purposes of ideologies, the reliable data publication is as much appreciated as a well done interpretation of finds. 54
