Savaria - A Vas Megyei Múzeumok értesítője 24/3. (1997) (Szombathely, 1997)

Ilon Gábor: Az archeológus Bándi Gábor

GABOR BANDI, THE ARCHAEOLOGIST (1939-1988) Gábor Bándi was born in a white-collar family in Budapest, on 17 of August, 1939. He was grown up in Kalocsa, where he went to school between 1945 and 1957. He expressed a special interest in archaeology already in his years at the grammar school, which possessed a remarkable archaeological and numismatic collection. He was often gazing with delight at the archaeological finds on the corridor of the City Hall of Kalocsa. After his final examination in the secondary school, he studied palaeo-archaeology and history under János Karán Banner, István Bona and Nándor Kalicz at the Faculty of Arts of Eötvös Lóránt University in Budapest. He took his archaeology degree for his thesis titled ,JSome questions of the Early Bronze Age settlement at Nyergesújfalu-Téglagyár and the Tokod group" in 1962. In 1963, he took his doctor's degree for the dissertation titled „The transition from the Early Bronze Age to the Middle Bronze Age (The Tokod group)". He worked for the Janus Pannonius Museum in Pécs from the summer of 1963 to the spring of 1973. From 1970, he was the director of the archaeological department of the museum. His activity in county Baranya was praised in detail by his former colleague, Attila Kiss (JPMÉ 34 [1989] 305-310). In 1973, Gábor Bándi obtained the position of the director of the Directorate of Museums in County Vas and from this time, he also headed the Archaeological Department of Savaria Museum. As an appreciation of his efforts as a director and as an archaeologist, he was elected to be the member of the Archaeological Subcommittee and the National Museum Board in 1978. In 1982, he was awarded the Kuzsinszky Bálint medal, and in 1983, the Móra Ferenc medal. From October of 1985, he was the deputy-manager of the Central Directorate of Museums of the Ministry of Culture. Then, from 1

st of May, 1988, he was the Head of the Museum Department of the Ministry till his early and sudden death on 26

th of July. His tragic, unexpected death broke the still promising career of the archaeologist, who had already been on the top of the trade. In the followings, I intend to highlight the most important events of his life's work, with especial regard to his activity in County Vas . The first period of his scientific work was connected to the topic of the Bronze Age in the South Transdanubian. At that time, he excavated the Early Bronze Age settlement of Pécs- Nagyárpád with hard work for long years. That was a unique achievement in the Carpathian Basin at that time, moreover there is not many followers of his action even in our days. The most important of his earth-and-timber castle excavations, carried out in that period, was the one in Lovasberény- Mihályvár in county Fejér, where he, together with Éva Petres, found the one and only Middle Bronze Age metallurgist workshop in Hungary. He became the expert of the Early and Middle Bronze Age in the South Transdanubian. He also carried out basic cataloguing, and published results and hypothesis in connection with the evolution, spreading and relations of the incrusted pottery culture. Together with Tibor Kovács, who was his classmate in the secondary school, he wrote essays on the Szeremle culture, which advanced the research of the topic. Gábor Bándi, Éva Petres and Tibor Kovács formed a research group dealing with the earthworks of the Bronze Age. That kept on working during Bándi's work in county Vas. He was one of the authors and editors of the monograph titled history of county Baranya from the prehistoric period to the Arpádian age"

, made for the general public. The second stage of his activity bound him to county Vas. Here he dealt especially with the questions of aeneolithicum and the early Bronze Age, but he also continued the research on the Middle Bronze Age. Moreover, he touched some aspects of the Late Bronze period, as the active lecturer and participant of international conferences (such as in 1972: Verona, in 1976: Jereván, in 1978: Eisenstadt and Plovdiv, in 1982: Vrdnik and Dresda, in 1983: Xanthi and Belgrade). Besides, he pursued remarkable research organising activity not only in the county, but on national and international level as well. He organised the scientific conference series titled „Velem talkings", which original purpose was to collect the Hungarian researchers, but later, it became international. He also published the lectures of these conferences. The first important step to this conference series was a discussion about the questions of the early Bronze age in the Carpathian basin and its environment between 26

th and 30

th of April, 1977 in Budapest and Velem, organised together with the Budapest Historical Museum and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.. The following conference in Bozsok-Szombathely between 20

th of May and 4

th of June in 1982 was organised by Bándi himself, titled Relations between North and South" (from the first millennium B.C. to the end of the Roman imperial period).