Szilágyi Miklós (szerk.): A Szekszárdi Béri Balogh Ádám Múzeum Évkönyve 10-11. (Szekszárd, 1982)

Gaál Attila: The 16th–17th century cemetery of Dombóvár–Békató

„Bikatol, Kenéz Vaszin Vicse, Vuk Draguja, Raduja Radoszlav, Gelszura Barbul, Vukdirag Radovan, Pavko Vuk, Paval Vuk, Jovan Radies, Vuk Radiboj, Dras Szima, Radovan Viten, Vukdirag Radoszlav. 10 hane, that is taxpayers". It was Előd Vass in his paper to point out studying the 1556 Turkish tax census of the Koppány sanja that the Iflaks settling in the area of the sanja (some sources call thems Vlahs or Thracians) cannot be identified with the marauders appearing in the neighbourhood castles at the beginning of the occupation. The originally mainly shepherding Iflaks must have been pushed by the large number of settling Serbians and Muslim turned Bosnians in the occupied area of Hungary where after settling they themselves served in the military and as a compensation, as could be seen in the data of the „defters" received somre ta exemptions. In full knowledge of their privileged situation the settlers wished not even to hear about those responsibilities which feudal villages owed to their landlords, in our area to the captain of some of the frontier castles. It is evidenced that the opposers were cruelly killed by the soldiers of the frontier castles. Traces of such raids can be detected ont the skeletons of both adults and children of the Békató cemetery, where marks of injuries inflicted by weapons could be found. (To adhere to the truth it must be stated that the sole reason of these bloody raids were the refusel of paying taxes and not the nationality of the settlers. Burning villages, cutting their lips, and disecting the children of the Hungarian villagers as well were the frontier castle soldiers' punishment against tax violations). Examining the bone material Kinga Ery has proven the gradual decline of the life expectancy of the population to be computed primarily by the drastic decrease of the numerical ratio of men. Beyond the unhealthy circumstances, the unusual swampy surroundings for these settlers, it can be explained with the flaring up of bellicose activity as well in which attacks against the villages, thus Békató as well, took part too. Imre Lengyel determined the use of the cemetery according to decomposition of the bone material to 100 30 years. Since both the physical anthropological and archaeological data point to the fact that no Moslem settlers mixed in within the neighbouring Hungarian population this time limit means the presence of the Iflaks as well. The abolishing of the settlement can then accordingly be brought into relation with the liberating struggles, and this means the October of 1686 in our area. Summary The 260 graves near the area called Békató-puszta today, on the nortehrn bank of the Kapos was the cemetery of the settled Iflak, or ratherthe Vlahs in the 16th and 17th centuries. The exact location of their settlement is not known yet, thus it is not at all sure that it may have occupied the earlier Hungarian village, established by the Bodo family of György in the 15th century. They opened their cemetery independently of the Hungarian cemetery in a new location. No church, or its foundations, no traces of a wooden church were found, the considerable disturbed state of the cemetery, making all other observations difficult too, permits a certain degree of doubtfulness. The lack of a church however is well supported by the fact that none of the oriented, one stratum, and presumably family burials provided any trace which might indicate the Christianity of this populatoon. The speical treatment used in taxation and the mass turning Moslem of the concurrently settling Bosnians further enforce our presumption that the inhabitants of Békató in the 17th century were not Christians. Studying the grave furniture we have noticed that our closest parallel is the Zombor-airport and Zombor-Bácsmonostorszeg cemetery and we could discover several identical burial customs with the southern Slavs of Baranya, primarily those of the Sokacs and the Bosnians. Along with the similarities some outstanding differences support the earlier opinion according to which the Iflaks or the Vlahs cannot be identified with the southern Slav settlers, the Bosnians, Serbians, or Croatians known from several sources. Although it would be imperative to know the 15th to 18th century Yugoslavian archaeological material we do accept the result of Kinga Éva who concluded after comparing the physical anthropological material of our cemetery to all possible Vlah material of the Balkan that the original home of the Dombóvár and Koppány region Vlahs was somewhere in the area of Crna Gora, or in the neighbouring Greek or Albanian Highlands. 183