Liszka József (szerk.): Az Etnológiai Központ Évkönyve 2006-2007 - Acta Ethnologica Danubiana 8-9. (Dunaszerdahely-Komárno, 2007)

Tanulmányok - Viga Gyula: A táj hasznosításának változásai a Bodrogközben (Összefoglalás)

drawn into cultivation were extended by forest clearance for many centuries. The most extensive transformation of the environment occurred between 1845 and 1900, with the regulation of rivers and the construction of embankments along watercourses and the draining of water-covered land. This transformation eliminated the differences between the exploitation of flooded and flood-free areas and increased the extent of land drawn into cultivation. A population growth occurred as a result and changes can be noted in the earlier settlement hierarchy too. These changes triggered the modernisation of peasant economies and led to a gradual social modernisation. However, there was no uniformisation in the lifeways of the region’s villages; the changed circumstances - most notably the markets and transportation - led to the emergence of new micro-regional variants of peasant culture.

Successive generations of the Bodrogköz population adapted to the varied environment in many ways. Various subsistence activities combined to form complex livelihood strategies, which could be modelled and categorised as types characteristic of a particular micro-region or village or a group of villages.

The lifeways of the population of the Bodrogköz reflect an adaptation to the potentials of the environment. At the same time, a part of the subsistence activities - farming and work culture - show a rather ambivalent relation to the écologie environment. Farming and direct forms of the exploitation of the environment complemented each other in the life of a particular settlement. This duality is reflected in the so-called floodplain economies as defined by historical geographical and ethnographical studies, which distinguish an early, differentiated variant ( 13th—15th centuries) and a later, complex variant. According to Sándor Frisnyák, the seemingly homogenous landscape of the Bodrogköz region can be divided into two major morphologic units: the floodplains and the floodfree levees. Both were exploited rationally by the region’s population. Although land-use took many different forms from the Hungarian Conquest period to the close of the 19th century, it can functionally be divided into two main types: the residential and the economic. Residential land-use was restricted to the flood-free micro-areas, the so-called ancient settlement areas, while economic landuse extended to the entire environment. The economic geographic phenomena reflected the environmental patterning. Even though extensive areas were seasonally or permanently covered with water, subsistence patterns showed a great variety and differentiation. A differentiated floodplain economy (fishing, specialised loach fishing, reed and mace production) combined with woodland management was practiced along the creeks, streams and oxbows branching from the rivers. The extensive meadows and pastures were exploited for stockbreeding, the higher-lying, flood-free areas were cultivated, while the hills and sand dunes were principally used for viticulture and fruit-farming.

The different modes of land-use reflect historical processes, which can be interpreted within the broader perspective of a settlement’s or micro-region’s history. These modes of exploitation fonn a complex structure and cannot be set in their proper perspective by simply proceeding from more ancestral subsistence techniques towards more complex models of work culture and peasant lifeways. Cultural traditions have preserved various forms of adaptation, offering a particular community a wide choice of strategies (perhaps periodically modified) for adapting to the environment. These strategies were socially differentiated from the Middle Ages on: serfs and peasant-tenants were generally engaged in farming, from which they fulfilled their feudal obligations, while fishing and gathering were generally practiced by marginal groups, especially after the river regulations.

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