Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 33/4. (2013)
Articles
184 E. Gáll Such a myth of ‘unity’ is created by the so called national culture.191 Certainly, the relation between material culture and ethnos is much more complicated .192 The relation between ethnicity and material culture (in this case archaeological culture) is mobile, unstable and fluid. One cannot clearly identify in graves the remains of individuals belonging to any particular ethnic group or the other. It is not ethnical identities detectible in the archaeological inventory but various distinctive cultural archaeological signs, traditions, relations, and blending that can usually be only indirectly related to different identities. One must also say that any human being can have several identities, so we only subjectively choose ethnical one, such as ‘Avar’ or ‘Hungarian conqueror’ because in any other given period of time some other identities could have been more important than during the 18th and 19th centuries. We mention that no population mentioned in narrative sources in the Carpathian Basin in the early medieval period can be associated or identified with any anthropological type or types, and no anthropological type can be associated with any ethnic group. So it can be seen that the archaeological finds hardly give any possibility to express clear cut ethnic interpretations. However, it may be assumed that by the 12th century, in the valleys of the Mures and Somesul Mic, due to the 10lh and 11th century immigrations and the sociological processes of acculturation and assimilation generated by the institutions of the polifunctional 10th century ‘nomadic’ state and the 11th century Christian kingdom, we can talk about a ‘Hungarian’ entity. Certainly, knowing medieval realities, this terminology must be used with care, aware of the fact that the entity itself underwent major changes during 300 years (from 896 to 1200). What was meant by Hungarian in the 10th century and what was meant by it in the 12lh century were two different realities. The cultural origins of these immigrant acculturised-assimilated ‘Hungarian populations must have been varied, colourful, which is shown by the fact that besides the Hungarian place names, a considerable amount of them can be traced back to Slavonic origins .193 In archaeological discussions, the population of the ‘Slavonic’ cremation burials has somehow been neglected, although based upon 191 Boia 2012,31. 192 On the classification of these systems see: Jones 1997, 106-127. 193 Kniezsa 1941, 21-25; Kristó 2004, 47-52. the place names, it seems clear that those who organised the state in the 10th and 11th centuries, must have contacted this people .194 From the 10th century, the times before the network of settlements was established in the area of the River Somesul Mic, we only have data about the cemeteries of some political-military centres, so there are grounds to suppose that the population of the 7th-9th century cremation burials (Däbäca, Doroltu, Jucu, Someseni) was partly integrated by the new conquerors in the 10th century, on the other hand, in the 11th century the kingdom started a new wave of gradual immigration similarly to that in the Mures valley, which was accompanied by the establishment of Christian institutions. In our opinion, the early Hungarian place names in Northern Transylvania can be connected to the population that migrated here in the 11th century as we do not know of any typical 10th century cemetery of common people in this area. We have reasons to suppose that the cemeteries of the population of cremation burials can be dated up to the end of the 10th century, similarly to Little and Great Poland, Ukraine where cremation burials were carried out as late as the beginning of the 11th century .195 Having investigated the area of settlements mapped according to the excavated cemeteries in the valley of the Somesul Mic and its side valleys, it seems that churchyard cemeteries exactly indicate the places of settlements, at the same time outlining the network established in the 11th century by the Hungarian Kingdom, upon earlier foundations. The place names196 allow us to suppose a considerable amount of Hungarian speaking people .197 In these settlements different social classes can be assumed. Monasteries provide a good example of this ,198 whose ethnic characteristic was secondary and we would not encourage anyone to make such analyses. Although it seems that the forced search for ethnicity in the middle reaches of the River Mures and the valley of the Somesul Mic in the western half of the Transylvanian Basin, is drawing to 194 Gáli 2013c, Vol. I, 835-837, 918-919. 195 Jazdzewski 1949, 91-191; Miskiewicz 1969, 241-302; Zoll-Adamikowa 1979; Zoll-Adamikowa 1998, 227-238; Ivakin 2011, 252, Fig. 4. 196 Kniezsa 1938,411-422; Kniezsa 1941, 25-30; Kristó 2004, 76-78. 197 In this sense we can cite also the chronicle form Echternachi: according to this chronicle countless Hungarian were killed by Tatars until they passed through the Mese§ Gates towards the Hungarian Great Plain. Lupescu 2005, 43. 198 Fiigedi 1991, 58-59; Werbőczy 1990, 269: Titulus CXXXIII. 8. §; Marosi 1999,15; Szakács 2004, 75.
