Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 33/4. (2013)
Articles
Data concerning changes in a cemetery surrounding a medieval church 261 similar occurrence in Homoródszentmárton, in 2011 during the excavations done around the church, where in the lower right corner of grave GR-1 a 2-3 cm pigmentation indicated the place of the wood but the planks themselves were not preserved. This type of coffin was still in use during the first half of the 17th century; at least this is was graves GR-37 and GR-59 indicated, found in the Reformed church in Telekfalva excavated in 2007, where already coffin nails were used.62 The observations done during the excavation of the coffin in a child’s grave even enabled us to reconstruct it.63 Based on the observations made during the excavation in Bögöz we may conclude that although there coffins with iron nails existed in the 16th century, these were not generally widespread. At this time most coffins still had wooden nails or joints, as during the excavation we stumbled upon mostly traces of wooden planks of the coffins and no iron nails. Out of the 225 burials only 39 contained coffin nails. By the 18th century, the fashion wave according to which coffins were decorated with imprints, nailed in place with small cooper nails, with various motifs or sometimes inscription decorating the top reached Bögöz as well (Plate 2.6). Larger forged iron nails covered with wood remains saturated with iron corrosion residues, were found in moderate condition as well as smaller iron nails decorated with copper spherical caps. The type of wood used for the coffins can be determined from the wood remains. During the making of copper ornaments, the spherical caps were glued on the tips of the forged iron nails using some type of whitish-gray adhesive (casein?), as the tip of the iron nail does not go into the spherical cap, and the copper plating has a single layer, so it is very likely that it was attached by gluing. The remains of the whitish-gray glue could be detected under the cap of nearly every nail. Similar ones were still in use in Bögöz during the first half of the 19th century. During the excavations we uncovered five coffins with imprints, one of the most intact being the coffin in grave 73, which had the year 1826 marked upon it. Similar coffins were found during the excavation of the Sándor crypt in the parish church in Csíksomlyó (Romanian: §umuleu Ciuc ).64 During the 2012 excavations we found several burials containing the remains of children 62 Nyárádi - Sófalvi 2009, 86-88, 90. 63 Nyárádi - Sófalvi 2009, 103 fig. 7.2-3. 64 Botár 2009, 51. belonging to the same families, who had died during plagues. The newborn baby and the 1 year old infant had been buried in a common grave during the 14th-15th centuries (GR-180, GR-181). A few hundred years later this same thing happened again. The two young children were buried in the same coffin (GR-158-159). In another case, in which they were of about the same age but supposedly not part of the same family (GR-107, GR-108), they had been buried in a common grave but separate coffins. Other interesting examples of burial rituals within families are graves GR-53 and GR-60. Soon after the burial (GR-60) of the woman deceased during the 19th century, when the coffin’s planks were still completely intact, the grave had been reopened in order to bury a young adolescent child (GR-53) on top of his mother (Plate 3.2). During the excavation we uncovered in the southeastern part an interesting element regarding the use of the cemetery. In contrast to other surfaces, here we had found several layers of graves on top of each other. During the digging of the pits for the graves during the modern period, they stopped immediately once they had reached the earlier burials, so we encountered 17th-18th century graves at the same depth as the ones from the 13th-14th centuries. There were cases when up to two or three burials had been placed directly on top of each other, so this was obviously the densest parts of the excavated cemetery (Plate 6.1-2). d. Inventory, clothing objects Out of the graves from the Árpád dynasty, which were in very bad condition, only one grave was found to contain added objects. In 2009, the skull found in the partially excavated grave GR-10 had two silver hair rings with ‘S’ shaped endings, with a diameter of 2 cm and 1.8 cm.65 Similar findings dating to the Árpád dynasty have been found in greater numbers due to the intensity of the excavations in recent years in Székely Land.66 During the 14th century, the vestry’s northern wall had been built over a part of a grave. A small round belt buckle with a 3.5-4 cm diameter was found in secondary position, inside the filling of grave GR-1. Similar ones were found in several cemeteries surrounding churches in Székely Land.67 Another belt buckle was found in secondary position during the cleaning of the vestry’s interior (Plate 12.16). 65 Sófalvi 2010,33-35. 66 Nyárádi 2012, 162-163. 67 Benkő 2012, 159.
