Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 29/3. (2009)
Gál-Mlakár Viktor: A 13-14. századi kerámia kutatástörténete Északkelet-Magyarországon
166 GÁL-MLAKÁR VIKTOR chronology of the fully preserved or restorable potteries from the Carpathian Basin. In 1993 he tried to ascertain the chronology of these ceramic cauldrons from the Kisalföld. The first complete outline about the 13th—14th centuries pottery-making was made by József Höllrigl in the 1930’s. After the Second World War, another study of Nándor Parádi and Imre Holl discussed the results of the great excavations in the Castle of Buda. After other studies about the pottery-making technologies, Imre Holl provided a great discussion about the typology and chronology of potteries from clearly defined layers. This work is still used as a great summarizing and systematizing foundation and lately it was only followed by short studies like those about: Esztergom-Main Square (Nándor Parádi), Budapest Dísz Square 8. (Katalin I. Melis), the yard of the Military History Institute (Zoltán Bencze). István Feld wrote till now the only conclusive study about pottery researching in 1987 in the volume of the Art of Hungary 1300-1470. Further new information appeared in the last two decades and that is why it is necessary to systematize the new accomplishments once more. Researching the potteries of the castle of Solymos from the Zemplén County made is necessary to review the history of the research of the white ceramics which was significant in the 13th— 14th centuries and to make new observations. I tried to analyze the significant particularities of the group of the painted white ceramics, the development of painted motifs (circles, half-circles, flecks, toothed wheel patterns) and regional detachment of the several types. The white ceramics, which was still considered unitarily, I could only research mainly respecting its form and painttechniques. I managed to identify three raw material distinguishable subgroups in the white ceramics belonging to the findings of Solymos: the yellowish white, the type from Buda and the greyish white one. The studies mentioned above are just about the Buda type. I was able to make new observations on the items of the yellowish white subgroup. Involving ethnographic methods of the researches I could find out that the raw material of the potteries was a type of clay with high kaolin content. But for firing these pots a very high temperature (1200-1600 Celsius cent.) was needed, which they could not have reached in the kilns of the Arpadian era. The sign of this lower temperature firing we could see in the form of a black or a dark grey line in the section area of the potteryfragments. Other parallels of this type of the potteries in North-Eastern Hungary could provide us with further chronological help in distinguishing the several groups. Also the ethnographic researches help us to localize the site of this type of clay; these sites are focused on the former Sáros, Gömör and Torna County (now Slovakia) and exist in Transylvania also in the mountain of Bihar and Hunyad County. To explore the spread of the white ceramics and the fabrication districts, it is necessary to begin new data-collecting in both Hungarian museums and the ones from Slovakia. The new directions of the research, I think, will be collecting and analyzing, aspiring to completeness, the potteries, because of the peculiarities (the small, and isolated potters’ workshop centres and fabric districts) of the Arpadian era’s pottery-making industry, coming from narrow areas. On the other hand I think it is very important to examine the fragments from several subgroups with electron microscopic research, which can render possible the localization of the sites of raw materials, the spread areas and the pottery making technologies.
