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

Középkor

So the fort of Bajcsa existed for a very short time, 22-23 years at most. Due to its specific position it always kept strong contacts with Styria, which paid and also catered for its garrison. This explains the existence of an unexpectedly rich source material concerning the construction, fortification, furnishing and the garrison of the fort in the county archives of Graz (see ROTH 1970), and the relatively large number of records in the Military Archives in Vienna (oral communication by Géza Pálffy). These two circumstances offer a unique possibility for archaeological evaluation. First because the find material found at the site can be very precisely dated to a short and well known period between 1578 and 1600 (mostly rather between 1578 and 1589), and second, as the features and archaeological finds uncovered by the excavations can be compared to the written documents. The archaeological traces of the construction problems discussed in the descriptions, e.g. the collapsed walls, were already found in the first year of the excavations. The find material, beside offering an entire cross-section of the life in the fort, and apart from the opportunity to be compared to the written lists, occupies a very special place in SW Transdanubia owing to its chronological position and geographical contacts. Namely, the wares from the different parts of Mura region, the Styrian, Croatian and Flungarian ones are mixed, and besides some unique, sometimes even in Europe, items appear as German, Austrian and North Italian products, which arrived here by a single transport, as personal belongings or as gifts, probably in result of the Styrian affinities. Bajcsa did not count among the important forts of Hungary, yet it was known for historians who knew the significance and the purpose allotted to it. Its place in the fields of the village and its approximate shape can be seen on a map of the Batthány manor from the 18th century (VÁNDOR 1994, 345). Systematic archaeological field surveys were conducted in the 1970s (by László Vándor and László Horváth), when a large number of brick and daub fragments were found beside the still visible southern and eastern stretches of the moat, and many sherds, animal bones and iron fragments were collected in the territory of the former fort. It turned out, at the same time, that the western side of the fort, or more exactly the north-western bastion and its direct vicinity have totally perished by now. No contemporary plan of the fort has survived, at least it has not yet been found in the archives. During the surveying of the landscape in 1995-96, a pentagonal form could be delineated, which fitted the depiction in the map from the 18th century. Nevertheless, we did not have exact, archaeologically acceptable information on the architectural details and the construction methods. The excavations in 1995-96 (then in 1997), completed with intensifying archive research, partly answered these questions. It could be deduced from the preliminary surveys that the place of the fort was actually "cut" from the hill, and it turned out during the excavations that the slantwise cut hillside was walled up with bricks on the northern side, along the line of the northern and the northeastern bastions and the connecting stone rampart between them. (The brick wall cannot yet be attested to along the entire circumference of the fort). Since this buttressing brick wall was not thick enough, it could not resist the pressure of the sand and collapsed at some spots. The unearthed bastions were built in old Italian system. Beside the north-eastern bastion, the foundations of the gate and the bridge facing Kanizsa were also uncovered. The walls of the fort (the ones that belong to the inner floor level) were made of palisade according to the recently obtained archive data. The traces of the palisade wall could not be observed in the case of the northern bastion, while at the north-eastern bastion we could record a shorter stretch of the post trench in 1997. László Vándor published several times the results of the excavations of 1995-96 (VÁNDOR 1997, 1998). These years the zone of the northern brick wall was searched, and excavations were conducted also in the northern and north-western parts of the fort, where various pits, post holes, the foundations of overground buildings and brick heaps were 164