Szabó Sarolta (szerk.): Hagyomány és változás a népi kultúrában.(Jósa András Múzeum Kiadványai 58. Nyíregyháza, 2005)
RÉGÉSZET - Pálóczi Horváth András: Az alföldi későközépkori lakóházak: vázszerkezetek és falazatok
András Pálóczi Horváth: Late Mediaeval Dwelling Houses on the Hungarian Plains: Structures and Walls The Plains (Hungarian Great Plains) is the largest macro-region in the Carpathian Basin with a total territory of 100,000 km 2 . Out of this, 52,000 km 2 belong to present-day Hungary. The average elevation of the Plains above sea level is 108,5 m, the lowest points are found at the lower segments of Tisza River, at a height of 76 m above sea level. The areas along the middle segment of the Danube and the alluvial plains of Tisza are the westernmost stretches of the traditional forest steppes. The traditional vegetation of the Great Plains originally consisted oak forests and plants characteristic of sand and loess plains, groves as well as dry and wet meadows. People living there have used locally available building materials for thousands of years since the neolithic age: earth, clay, wood, twigs used for wickerworks, hay for thatched roofs and other plants. These materials were used for building houses in the middle ages. The exact preliminaries of the structure frameworks and the filling material of the walls go back to the agricultural villages of the Bronze Age. In our present study, based upon archeological findings, we analyse the building materials, construction techniques and framework types of the houses unearthed so far. The most advanced forms of dwelling houses in the Carpathian Basin emerged in the Great Plains during the 14 th and 15 th centuries, and architectural novelties spread to the other parts of the country from there. We have archeological data of 190 village houses, found at 45 excavation sites. As the descriptions are not always sufficiently detailed and accurate, the proportion of not exactly defined structures and walls is relatively high (28 buildings, 15 %). The ancient pit house, in a limited number, survived into the 14 th and 16 th centuries (14 buildings, 7 %), sometimes it was even used as a dwelling house (Nagyfüged, Jászdózsa), often as stables and stalls (Karcag-Orgondaszentmiklós, Jászdózsa-Négyszállás, Szentkirály) and also often as storage facility for wine and other foodstuffs (Szentkirály).
