Rajna András (szerk.): Múltunk a föld alatt. Újabb régészeti kutatások Pest megyében - A Ferenczy Múzeum kiadványai, A. sorozat: Monográfiák 1. (Szentendre, 2014)
Tettamanti Sarolta: Régészti kuttások a váci vábren 1998-2002 között
English Summaries Tibor Ákos Rdcz The Medieval Church and Churchyard of Dabas The village „Dobos” appeared in the written sources in the second half of the 13th century and during the 14th century it was possessed by gentry families with the family name „Dabas”. Like the neighbouring communities, it was a typical village of the minor aristocracy. After the Fifteen Years’ War, in the diocesan survey of Vác from 1628, the village already appeared as a destroyed settlement. During the 18th century the depopulated Dabas was resettled southeast of its medieval antecedent, therefore, the medieval village survived in a rather good condition for research. The investigation of the church hill became necessary because of an intention of erecting a monument displaying also the remains and the ground plan of the former church. To localise this church, a site grid was set up on the highest point of the hill, which consisted of 4x4-metre wide squares, and this grid was continuously enlarged in accordance with the excavation results. Six such squares were unearthed, between them 1-metre thick section walls, and two other squares were also prepared with an area of 2x4 metres. After recording each of the section walls, they were cleared away, thus, in the end a larger, continuous surface was gained. The whole excavated area was 171 m in extent. Including the burials altogether 108 archaeological features were recorded. The written sources inform us that the stones of the destroyed medieval church were reused for building a new church in the 18th century. The ground-work of the former church had a stony, sandy-limy fill and appeared as a trench. As a result of the reusage, the masonry was demolished to such an extent that not a single stone remained on its original place. In the daub recorded at the bottom of the foundation trench a parvus of King Sigismund of Luxemburg was found. Consequently, the building of the late medieval church could be dated to the Sigismundian age (late 14th, early 15th century). The foundation outlined the details of the ground plan of the church. Nevertheless, the data gained so far allows only a vague interpretation: the church must have had a square ended sanctuary, a sacristy and a northeastsouthwest orientation. In the age of Sigismund this kind of sanctuary shape was rather unusual, although its possibility cannot be excluded, since even in the 14th century churches with square ended sanctuaries were built. Furthermore, if one accepts the supposition that the section of the foundation in the seventh square can be identified with the western end of the former church, in that case the interior of the building is more characteristic of the Arpadian than the late medieval period. There is, however, an alternative interpretation: if the foundation section that is narrower than the main walls and runs toward the northeast corner of the third square is interpreted as the foundation of the sanctuary, in that case the sanctuary walls must be searched outside our excavation squares, that is east of them. Consequently, the construction of the exact ground plan of the medieval church building is only possible after additional archaeological investigations. On the evidences of the earliest royal coins (those of Stephen II, Béla II, and Géza II) the origins of the church go back to the beginning, or maybe to the second third of the 12th century. The possible rebuilding of the medieval church during the time of King Sigismund, the late medieval burials as well as the later extraction of the church walls in the 18th century disturbed the layers to such an extent, that only a few pieces of evidence remained to draw any conclusions on the early phases and conditions of the building. Small patches of the homogenous, dark brown fill from the Arpadian age could be recorded in some parts of the excavated area. A few burials without grave goods also belonged to this layer. Those two remnants of walls which were recorded in the section wall between the first and fourth squares and in the second square had survived in their original position, but they do not fit in the structure of the late medieval church. Due to the fact that after the age of King Sigismund there was not any building process carried out on the church hill, it can be supposed that those wall sections of good quality, erected from broken stones, bond by gray wall plaster, with a roughly northwest-southeast orientation must be the parts of the church from the Arpadian period (12th—13th century). The northern-northwestern part of the wall remains found in the second square was carved in those parts where the wall of the late medieval nave ran across, and this superposition proves their dating before the Sigismundian age. The supine burials were adjusted to the northeast-southwest axis of the church. Nevertheless, two burials, one with the coin of King Ladislaus I, had a different west-east orientation. They can surely be dated before the foundation of the church. In the sixth square the skeleton of a two-four-year-old little boy was found. Around his waist there was 176
