A Veszprém Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei 23. (Veszprém, 2004)

Palágyi Sylvia köszöntése

A TRIBUTE TO SYLVIA PALAGYI Sylvia Palágyi is one of the most active Hungarian archaeologists; I think this claim is still true even if we look beyond the circle of scholars of provincial Roman archaeology. When appraising her far-reaching activities, we not only pay tribute to an outstanding, internationally recognised researcher on a significant jubilee occasion, but also to an expert who has attained outstanding achievements in the field of museum materials, and who never considers her work completed either at the excavation, or with the publication of results. She is the author and at the same time the editor of three monographs (as the main or co-author of these, published as joint works), and besides these, of 115 studies, research reports, essays, exhibition guides, forewords, entries, reviews, instructional works and pamphlets. If her book reviews and excavation reports are also considered along with the above, then she herself would probably not know the precise number of entries in her bibliography. Though the value of her work does not lie in the numbers, but in that striving for perfection which accompanies the finds from excavation to presentation, in attempting to obtain and publish all available scientific material on them. She was educated in schools and secondary schools in Budapest and in cities of Transdanubia. She obtained a degree from the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) Faculty of Liberal Arts in 1967, in the fields of archaeology and history. During her university years, she learnt the most from Gyula László, and from András Mócsy, the scholar of the Roman period, who both shaped the knowledge, methods and mentality of generations of archaeologists. She wrote her thesis on city architecture of the Roman period. During the course of her labours, she has perhaps been disloyal to this one subject, in all other respects, she can be regarded as a paragon of faithfulness. With a fresh diploma in her hand, she came to Veszprém Museum in 1967 (named „Bakonyi Museum" at that time), where she has since climbed up pretty well every rung of the administrative ladder. She has „only" had this one job, which we can truly appreciate in today's world of swirling commotion, changes of flags, transfers, and frequent changes of job in the interest of rapid career building, even if many do not consider loyalty (to a job, research field, or conviction) to be a virtue. At the beginning of her career, she immediately got into „the deep end:" for years she worked on the team dealing with volume 4 of the Archaeological Topography of Hungary, examining the sites of the Pápa and Zirc districts. She is one of those to whom we can be grateful that in Hungary, archaeological topography research was first successfully completed in Veszprém County: the material in the published volumes not only covers the whole of the county, but also the territory of Keszthely district, which now belongs to Zala County. As one of the five-member author collective, Sylvia Palágyi contributed to the success of the volume by writing almost 160 entries on the Roman period. During the course of the topography work, she began to deal with the Pannónia tumuli, and due to this she has become the best researcher on this burial rite in Hungary, and internationally one of the best known scholars in the field. In twenty of her works, she deals with the most varied aspects of tumulus burials. She obtained a university doctorate in this field in 1980, and a degree „candidate of science" in 1994. Three of her large excavations, carried out according to plan over several years, have enriched our knowledge of the tumuli: these were in Inota, Baláca and Kemenesszentpéter. These three exemplary excavation sites have since provided pretty well the most important evidence in connection with the dating, questions of origin, and ethnic composition of the tumulus burials. More than twenty years ago, she published the Inota tumuli in a small monograph-scale article in the columns of Alba Regia. In these, the leading members of the Eraviscus aristocracy, who buried with weapons, were presumably interred, with the chariots also depicted on the gravestones, with terra sigillata tableware, dateable to the time of Trajan, and with glassware. A wall was built around one of the high mounds, the sanctuary painted on the encircling walls was occupied. The tumuli excavated between 1973-1975 could be visited within the framework of a memorial presentation, scarcely fifteen years after completion of the excavations. She uncovered one of the earliest Roman tumuli in Transdanubia in Kemenesszentpéter, which is dated by the weapons and bronze vessels enclosed to the years around 100 AD. She began the research into the Roman period mounds in 1969, and then continued it in 1990-1991 : the memorial presentation of these is also underway. Between 1984 and 1986, she was researching the 16