Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 33/4. (2013)
Articles
Data concerning changes in a cemetery surrounding a medieval church 257 indicating that it had been surrounded earlier by a cemetery trench - as observed in Rugonfalva41; or a hedge, for which our best example so far is the early foundation trench for a hedgerow uncovered in the eastern side of the cemetery in Homoródszentmárton, at the base of which unbaptized children were buried.42 In the cemetery in Bögöz we excavated a surface of 160-170 square meters in 2012 , in which we stumbled upon the traces of 215 burials, to which another 10 burials excavated in 2009 were added. During the archaeological excavation we opened small excavation trenches along the walls, and we also investigated the drainage trenches, which generally had a width of 1 m. One of the major disadvantages of the rescue excavation was that we could only work on the areas designated by the planners and that we could only investigate the areas archaeologically to the relative depth appointed by them. We calculated the excavation’s relative depth from the threshold stone at the southern entrance, its absolute value being 450.07 m. With the exception of the western side, we investigated the cemetery in even proportion, so we made specific observations regarding its use and functioning (Plate 10). The investigation of the cemetery was done with a trench system - although archaeologically it was quite destructive as we only managed to partially excavate many graves - we made stratigraphic observations at nearly every grave, thanks to which we managed to determine much more precisely when they were made. The dating of some of the graves was further facilitated by the church’s construction and repair layers, their starting levels and the filling of the graves themselves. In order to more easily document the two longitudinal trenches, we divided them into five meter sections and their full length was 36-37 meters. Along the length of the wall, also counting the ones made during the 2009 excavation, we opened a total of 10 small excavation pits. The ones made in 2012 were connected by trenches with the two longitudinal trenches. In order to determine more precisely the graves, we had documented the cross-section of every wall. The graves, which had been detected but left unexcavated also received numbers, their proportion was 32 percent of the number of total graves. 41 Sófalvi 2012, 176. 42 Sófalvi 2012, 166. In quantitative terms the data from the excavated graves revealed that, along the centuries the most extensively used part of the cemetery was the southern part, as 43 percent of the documented graves were found here (Plate 2.5). Other excavations done in the Székely Land also confirmed that a church’s southern side was the most preferred burial place during the middle ages.43 In Bögöz 30% of the graves were found on the northern side and 27% on the eastern side. 37% of the excavated graves belonged to children and 63% to adults. This evidently doesn’t accurately reflect medieval data, as everyone knows that child death rates were much higher back then, but they are not considerably different from the average percentages between 41-59%.44 The distortion of the data can be attributed to the fact that the large graves made during the modern period destroyed a greater proportion of the smaller child graves, while during the modern period child death rates had dropped much lower than they were earlier. Very little secondary scattered bone material was recovered from the medieval burials, which can be explained by the fact that an ossuary was in use in the cemetery grounds. Its exact location could not be determined during the excavation. The small makeshift wall section made from round stones, with a shallow foundation, discovered on the church’s northern side, east of the vestry, which is also earlier than the gothic vestry, of which we only found the western wall, is maybe connected to such a building (Plate 2.4 ). The ossuary functioning on the cemetery grounds was dismantled in the 18th century, supposedly because it became filled. The human remains removed from there were taken north of the church and buried in an eight meter long oval pit. We cut across that pit during the excavation of the northern side of the trench surrounding the church. The pit reached the relative depth of 1.5-1.6 m, of which bone material made up a layer one meter thick, along its full length. After detecting the large quantity of bone material, the human remains excavated from here, if compared to the average weight of the full human skeleton reveal that we discovered around 200-250 individuals. And this must have been only one third of the materials yielded by the pit. Beneath it we found several 16th-17th century burials, which helped us date it. The starting levels of the pit and its filling, which contained a considerable amount 43 Benkő 2012, 153. 44 Mende 2005, 186.
