Mesterházy Károly (szerk.): AZ 1997. ÉV RÉGÉSZETI KUTATÁSAI / Régészeti Füzetek I/51. (Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum Budapest, 2001)

Őskor

Katalin Almássy-Péter Bocz-Eszter Istvánovits-Katalin Kurucz The bronze find of Máriapócs-Páskuni (No. 2) To meet the purpose of the new periodical, a smaller find unit will be presented in the followings. László Dám museum curator in Nyírbátor reported to the Jósa András Museum in Nyíregyháza in July 1997 that bronze objects were found in the fields at Máriapócs. We arrived at Máriapócs on 29. July, 1997, and met the owners of the site. They told us that the objects had been found after ploughing. Children collected them and one of the relatives dug a smaller pit as well. The collected objects were all handed in by those who had found them and the museum rewarded them with a prize of 10.000 Ft. In the course of the survey of the site we could observe that the bronze depot was found between the furrows of the plough and more pieces might have remained under the surface. Since the field was covered by maize at that time, we could neither excavate nor explore the region with a metal detector. The smaller test excavation, conducted between 6. and 14. October, had to be postponed after the snapping of the maize. The site itself is on the bank of an old water course (the present Máriapócs channel) on a low hill (Fig. 1). The soil is black loessy clay, the humus layer was only a spit thick. First we cleared a larger surface from the maize stalks, then scanned the area with a metal detector. Smaller and larger bronze fragments (and many iron nails) were spotted at several places. After digging a test trench, an area of about 12x8 m was checked. We found the pit, where the local people looked for the bronze objects. The depot, which was turned up by the plough, must have been somewhere here. Furthermore, some vague spots could be seen on the scraped surface but none of them proved to be archaeological features. First we removed the soil from the trenches, then checked with the metal detector if any metal stayed in it. During 15