Wellmann Imre szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 1971-1972 (Budapest, 1973)

Preface

PREFACE This volume represents a particular line in the series of the Hungarian Agricultural Museum Yearbooks. The existing volumes of the „Hungárián. Agricultural Museum Proceedings" contain brief studies of the staff members of the Museum in Hungarian with abstracts in other languages (larger monographs are published in special volumes of „Studies on Agricultural History"). This time our 1971—1972 Yearbook is based on wide international scientific co-operation, just like the current volumes of another publication series of our Museum, the „Bibliographia Históriáé Rerum Rusticarum Internationalis"

. It contains 66 studies in English, French and German, written by agricultural historians and ethnologists of 12 countries — besides Hungary — i.e. Austria, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, German Democratic Republic, German Federal Republic, Jugoslavia, Norway, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The occasion to base this volume on the centributions by scientists of several nations was the III. International Congress of Agricultural Museums which was organized according to the decision of the International Association of Agricultural Museums by the Hungarian Agricultural Museum from April 19th to 23rd, 1971, in Budapest, on the 75th anniversary of its foundation. This congress was a remarkable meeting of agromuseologists and agricultural historians of the world. It was attended by 243 experts from 25 countries, and world-wide organizations such as the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the International Council of Museums (ICOM) were represented at it. The Congress worked in the following 6 sections: I. Agromuseology

; II. Development of agricultural implements; III. Transformation of traditional agriculture; IV. Regional researches (on the formation of agricultural regional units); V. Archaeobotanics

; VI. Domestication and history of domestic animals. It appears from these subjects that the Congress covered a very wide field of agromuseology and agrarian history. This was further evidenced by the many-sidedness of the questions discussed, and by 153 lectures giving rise to lively debates. So it is not surprising that the General Assembly of the International Association of Agricultural Museums held on the occasion of the Congress decided to publish this rich material partly in the „Acta Museorum