Rácz Tibor Ákos: A múltnak kútja. Fiatal középkoros regészek V. konferenciájának tanulmánykötete - A Ferenczy Múzeum kiadványai, A. sorozat: Monográfiák 3. (Szentendre, 2014)
Képtáblák
English Summaries Tibor Ákos Rácz Árpád Age Dwelling Structures Along the Track of the Highway MO. Viewpoints to the Classification of Pit Houses The author of this study describes and publishes all the data of the pit houses uncovered at the Árpád Age excavation sites by the track of the highway MO between 2001 and 2006 in a unified manner. He discusses the characteristics of the vernacular architecture at the Pest Plains (Pesti-síkság). The closeness of the find spots provides a possibility to track the changes in the structure of the buildings within a rather narrow geographical area. Based on the archaeological remains of the sites dating between the Hungarian Conquest (the 890s) and the fourteenth century, a chronological sequence of the pit houses was established. In addition, based on their ground plans, even the architectural characteristics of shorter periods were identified. The most important characteristics of the pit houses that they are sunk into the ground, they a have an earth-timber structure and, apart from a negligible part of them, their interiors are unicellular. Thus, it is justified to raise the question whether these seemingly identical buildings could be classified, and if it is possible, on the basis of which features then. The ground plan of these buildings, their size and orientation, their stokers and the columns that held the rising floor-timbers went through a special shift in this region in the tenth-thirteenth centuries. The structure of the different building parts and the use of the different technological solutions were not haphazard but rather consistent within certain shorter periods, that is the reason why it was possible to point out some transformation tendencies. When classifying these farmhouses, the complex process of their formation and the changes of them cannot be understood only by investigating one single aspect (depth, stokes, location of the entrance, etc.). Analyzing the structural elements of the pit houses and studying all the characteristics, it was possible to develop a classification system which goes beyond such classifications based on different aspects. In the tenth-eleventh centuries only one pit house archetype existed in the region of the Pest Plains which was characterized by a rectangular shape, ears on each shorter side, unicellular structure with one furnace. Some of their characteristics (like size and orientation) and their equipment (especially stoke) went through slow changes but the structure remained the same during the twelfth century. In the twelfth-century houses excavated at Üllő site No 1 and 2 new walling and roofing techniques occur, and a real technological change was the appearance of pillars at the sides of the pits. The elevation of the roof from the surface led to major changes in the inner structure, and perhaps this is the moment of the appearance of a new pit house type. Both the size and height were larger than that of the previous type. Their floor, of course, still remained sunken into the ground. Although it is tempting to do so, but the two house types cannot be put into a genetic range since it would require much more data to prove that the structural changes of the pit houses are connected to the appearance of a higher level construction. From the middle of the Árpád Age period the above described two architectural forms existed side by side in the region. The earlier two ears-ridge-pole structure of the roof is still there, for instance, at a site with objects dating to the twelfth—thirteenth century (Vecsés No 36). The thirteenth-century buildings cannot be classified to this group because of the lack of the consistently recurring unified characteristics. Nevertheless, the houses of varied designs imply that this period was dominated by the introduction of new solutions and also that by this time the classic pit house types became outdated. 456
