A Nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum évkönyve 41. - 1999 (Nyíregyháza, 1999)
Régészet - Eszter Istvánovits: Tiszavasvári-Városföldje, Jegyző-tag. A settlement of the 5th century
Eszter Istvánovits Fig. 9 Tiszadob-Sziget, feature 118. 9. kép Tiszadob-Sziget 118. objektum Leaving aside the detailed study of the analogies of this phenomenon observed in a wide circle in time and space -1 mean the placing of human remains and dog corpses into settlement features - I would like to specially refer to only one data which in itself draws our attention to the need of a different approach of this question. Recently in Poland, at the site of Slawsko Wielkie a cultic place used in the 1st century B.C. was excavated (BEDNARCZYK 1998.78-79). In the middle of the four, 5-6 m large, rectangular buildings round altars were standing. Around the "shrines" animal dog, goat, sheep and pig - skeletons were unearthed and sacrally isolated pits with a human skeleton in each of them. The group of phenomena of the sacral sphere is going to be a topic of a special study. Find material In Tiszavasvári - as it is usual at settlements - the majority of the find material is represented by pottery. 12. Together with the kiln and its surroundings about 550 vessels and fragments have been found: 365 wheel-made and 185 handmade ones. Not taking into consideration the material of the pottery workshop - it would slightly distort the statistics because of its special situation - we have to count with the fragments of about 400 wheel-made vessels, whereas the number of handmade ones is only 70-80. The percentage of wheel-made and handmade ceramics is different in certain features. In many cases there are no any handmade vessels in a feature (e.g. house 4 and 6, pits 2-3, 5-11 etc.). The highest percentage of handmade pottery was observed in house 1 (23 handmade and 36 wheel-made pieces). Wheel-made vessels In the Tiszavasvári settlement the material of the wheel-made vessels is very diversified. Most of them is well processed, gray or brick-red (240 ones among the mentioned 400 pieces 12 ). Their material and technology cannot be separated from the earlier Sarmatian pottery of the Great Hungarian Plain, which is absolutely similar. The other (less numerous - 160 pieces out of 400 ones) part of the material is represented by vessels tempered with more or less sand, pebbles, small ground white pebble granules. The tempering and the ingredients of the material of the latter part is very diversified. In the material of the pottery kiln, represented by strongly burnt and deformed vessels remained there in the course of the last firing, we found the pieces of both groups: that means that the wheel-made ware of two kinds was fired together, that is to say at the same temperature. At this last occasion mainly storage vessels, vessels with spherical body (most of them with smoothed pattern) and cooking pots got into the kiln. Series of relatively numerous bowls with crumbling material not ideally burnt - could be of also local production. In the following I describe the forms of ceramics represented in the settlement. Because of the lack of space I shall not give the detailed analysis of each type and emphasize only the most important features. Forms of pottery Bowls The majority of the bowls is well processed, gray, brown or brick-red, wheel-made. This is one of the most frequent forms at the settlement. We have found several of its variants. Forms with steep and spherical walls as well are represented by a number of pieces. Among them we have to emphasize the ones with semispherical body and obliquely cut edge decorated with smoothed wave pattern (PI. IX. 1-2, XXII. 1-3, XXIV.4, XLV.1-2, LIV.3). These are the special 178
