Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 33/4. (2013)
Articles
DATA CONCERNING CHANGES IN A CEMETERY SURROUNDING A MEDIEVAL CHURCH (LESSONS LEARNED FROM A RESCUE EXCAVATION) ZSOLT NYÁRÁDI Keywords: medieval village, church, cemetery, pottery, iron tools, clothing accessories Cuvinte cheie: sat medieval, bisericä, necropolä, ceramicä, artefacte de her, accesorii vestimentare The restoration of the church in Bögöz (Romanian: Mugeni), started in 2012, offered a unique opportunity for the archaeological excavation of a cemetery surrounding a still standing medieval church. The trench system was created to drain rain water and surrounded the church from all, except the western side. As the main objective was the drainage of water from the roof and walls we occasionally had opportunity to study the church’s construction layers. Further away from the church we got a southern, an eastern and a northern cross-section of the entire cemetery. The analysis of the excavated graves and their documented cross-sections enables us to create a complete image of a cemetery opened during the 12th century, which had been used maybe not intensively but constantly up until the end of the It' century. We can actually find out which were the most used parts along the centuries. The destroyed graves are not enough for studying the settlement’s demography but they still yield much valuable data about burial rituals. By using this data we can analyze the effects of a more widely adopted 18th century legislation on burials, and through the detailed anthropological analysis of bone material we may gain insight into the lives of the medieval and modern era inhabitants of Bögöz. The Churches of Bögöz The settlement lies in the Bögöz basin, along the Küküllő River (Romanian: Tárnává Mare) (Plate 1.1-1.3). The excavation of its medieval church was done during the restoration of its historic monument. The church mentioned in 13331 can be found on the left terrace of the Nagy-Küküllő River, bordered in the east by Kányád creek (Plate 1.3). From the outstanding results of the 2012 excavation we mention that we managed to identify the presence of parts of an Árpád age settlement predating the church. In the nave’s northern part, in the fifth excavation trench, beneath the church’s construction layers we found the pit of a building (supposedly a dwelling) which had been dug into the ground (Plate 9.2-3 ). We completely excavated its northern side. The nave’s northern wall was built over the buildings southern side, a gothic pillar was placed over its western side, and its eastern side fell outside our excavation surface (Plate 2.1). The object’s filling yielded brown and grayish brown pottery fragments with spots, tempered with small pebbles and sand, made on a slow potter’s wheel, with wave shaped lines and groups of wave shaped lines scratched into them as decorations. Beside these pots we also found dark brown fragments, tempered with sand and small pebbles, belonging to a ceramic cauldron. The fragments would have been part of the cauldron’s edge and its side, which had burn marks on the inside (Plate 13.11-18). Beside the pottery fragments we also found a small quantity of animal bones and a fragment of a hair ring. The building most probably burned down because in its filling we found a large quantity of wattle-and-daub, with traces of charcoal. (Plate 13.18-10) Based on the artifacts, this object dates back to the 12th century. Pottery fragments from this period can be found in secondary position scattered all around the area, so it is obvious that before the church had been built, a section of a settlement stretched along the left bank of the creek. Some of its archeological material could also be found inside the earliest graves (Plate 13.20-22). A similar settlement section was discovered between 1960-1961, in Víziok, Bögöz commune, where during a rescue excavation, artifacts and dwelling traces were unearthed, dating back to the Árpád dynasty, among which there were also fragments ‘MonVat I. 115. MARISIA XXXIII, 2013, p. 251-290.
