Szekessy Vilmos (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 60. (Budapest 1968)
Wenger, S.: Data to the anthropology of a late Roman period population in the SE Transdanubia
Data to the Anthropology of a Late Roman Period Population in the SE Transdanubia By S. WENGER, Budapest Comitat Baranya and the region of the mouth of the river Drava (the area between the Danube and the Drava) is a territory famous for the rich collections of objects hailing back to past millennia (TÓTH, 1961). It is best known for a number of extensive ruins. There stood in these localities, as already established by the late J. DOMBAI, director of the Janus Pannonius Museum in Pécs (1957), Roman villas, having been, together with their farm- and other outbuildings, the centres of latifundia. It was probably the southern slopes of the Mecsek range, this extremely favourable site of a warm, Mediterranean character, which had attracted the affluent military officers serving in the forts of the nearby limes, and Sophianae where the well-to-do civil servants and merchants acquired large estates and become landed gentry. The fact, furthermore, that the civic seat of the province had been transferred from Aquincum to Sophianae in 292 A.D. indicates that the southern parts of the region were less exposed to the attacks and ravages of the Barbarians. It follows that the archeologieal and anthropological explorations of the SE Transdanubia offer great opportunities to enhance our informations on the ethnical, sociological, and economical conditions of the Late Roman Period in Pannónia. The studies concerning the archeologieal material originating from this period are mainly connected, as already stated above, with the name of J. DOMBAY. As far as the anthropological investigations are concerned, however, we have to confess that they are meagre in the extreme. True, the number of cemeteries exposed from the Late Roman Period, and that of the anthropological findings saved from them, is small — as related to the numerous settlements — from the area of the SE Transdanubia, and even of these it was merely the material from Bogád which has been worked up and published (TÓTH, 1962). By the working up and the present publication of the results of the researches pertaining to the anthropological findings of the Late Roman Period, originating from the localities Vörösmart, Zengővárkony II, Fazakasboda, Kő, Kővágószöllős, and Hidas (deposited in the anthropological collection of the Janus Pannonius Museum, Pécs), as well as from Feked (preserved in the Anthropological Department of the Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest), I intend to fill in the gaps and submit data to our informations concerning the anthropological features of the populations in the Late Roman Period of the SE Transdanubia. Locality conditions Vörösmart Excavation data with respect to the cemetery have not been entered in the archeologieal diary of the Janus Pannonius Museum, Pécs, hence we have to rest content with the folio wings: Vörösmart is a Late Roman Period locality, situated in the Danube — Drava angle of confluence. Excavations were led by J. DOMBAY in 1943, and 25 graveswere exposed.
