Ilon Gábor: Szombathely őskori településtörténetének vázlata (Szombathely, 2004)

Őskorunk 2. INTRODUCTION The first city monograph of Hungary, presenting the settlement of ancient times, was written about Szombathely, or Savaria to be more precise by István Schoenwisner, rector-professor of the University of Pest. The title of the book title was "Antiquitatum et históriáé Sabariensis ab origine usque praesens tempus libri novem"and was published in Pest in 1791. Its patron, János Szily, was the founding bishop of the bishopric. However, the common feature of the city history monographs, each compiled by Adolf Kunc and Kelemen Kárpáti (1880, 1894) is that no word was spoken about Pre-historic times, notwithstanding a few studies discussing the artifacts of the aforementioned age had already been written (see below). The pre-historic period of Szombathely was not even introduced in the millenia monograph of the county. In consequence of such precedences, I was looking forward to holding the new historical summary of the city in my hands with high expectations compiled by Gábor Kiss, Endre Tóth and Balázs Zágorhidi Czigány. Unfortunately, the history of centuries prior to the foundation of the Roman city is neither outlined in this very thorough and high quality work (History of Savaria - Szombathely I. From the foundation of the city to 1526, Szombathely, 1998). As a matter of fact, I added and published the following comments in respect to this book in the first issue of Vasi Szemle 2000 ('Vas Review'): the explanation of the authors, i.e. '...We have bare knowledge of Pre-historical artifacts recovered in the area of the city.', or '...we have poor available information...' (see pp. 4.) is hard to accept. Who and what extent has no sufficient knowledge? - I enquired myself. In this issue I am eager to prove that we conspicuously have sufficient knowledge to outline at least the Pre-historic past of the settlement. Just to note the way the publisher and also the authors refused to include pre-historic times is quite unique in the scope of monographs recently published in respect to the history of Hungarian settlements. To prove my statement, hereby I would wish to recall instances, where Pre-history was not disregarded, such as History of Szeged I. From the beginnings to 1686 (ed. by Gy. Kristó) Szeged, 1983; History of Miskolc I. From the beginnings to 1526 (ed. by A. Kubinyi and P. Tóth) Miskolc, 1996; Nagykanizsa. City monograph I. (ed. by J. Béli - M. Rózsa - A. Lendvai) Nagykanizsa, 1994; Studies from the History of Pápa. City monograph I. (ed. by A. Kubinyi) Pápa, 1994; Studies from the History ofKülsövat (ed. by G. Ilon) Külsővat, 1996; Studies form the history ofCsepreg. (ed. by J. Dénes) Csepreg, 1996 etc. and the line could be continued long further on. With this study, I aim to prove credibly that the story of inhabitants was not launched by the Roman Age, but Szomabathely had its own Pre-history, as well. The most important point de facto is to make the city government, investors and the citizens themselves understand and consider this aspect apart from the archaeologists of the local museum, as this portion of our past as well as the pre-historic artifacts of this cultural heritage and moreover legality (see Act LXIV, 2001 ) may only be saved and preserved in mutual cooperation. My objective, therefore, is to provide a brief outline of the period prior to the one described in the 1st issue of the city monograph not only for professionals, but for those who have no in-depth knowledge in this respect and may sense a feeling of lack whilst being interested in the history of the city. The ideas described above led me on my path to write this book. I consider one of my lectures as a milestone presented beforehand on January 26, 2001 at 17.00 pm at Savaria Múzeum and also an article published in the 4th edition of Vasi Szemle in 2001 in which I published the wheel of a cart modell recovered in the area of the current Metro whole sale store. //