Dr. T. Tóth szerk.: Paleoanthropological studies (Anthropologia Hungarica 8/1-2. Budapest, 1968)

ÁNTHROPOLOGIÁ HUNGARICA TOME VIII. 1968 No 1-2. Section Anthropologique du Musée d'Histoire Naturelle THE OUTLINES' OF AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION OP THE CEMETERY (XI-XV c

.) AT SOPRONBANFALVA, WEST HUNGARY By L. 0. BOTTYÁN The village Sopronbánfalva lies 3 km west of Sopron, at the northern slopes of the Sopron Range above the valley of the rivulet called Ráb. Dr. Á. BOTTYÁN, archeologist of the Hungarian National Museum, began excavations in the autumn of 1943 around the rather neglected chapel, dedicated to Mary Magdalene, in the village of several thousands of inhabitants. The chapel was built probably in the XI-XII centuries. It hails back to the Árpád Age X-XIII century) and, erected in the Roman style, it was enlarged some two or three centuries later, with a Gothic spire added to the entrance and the original chapel also remodelled. Beneath the church,the skeletons of 3 males and a child were excavated. Still further down,the ruins of a building from the Roman Period were found.The remnants of its walls continued even beyond the confines of the chapel.Even the air-heating equipment of the enormous Roman mansion was discovered in the course of. excavations (Archeological Archives). An extensive cemetery surrounded the church; it could partly be exposed by the aid of the excavating ditches laid out in the area, but the houses of the village, erected over it, have to a certain extent restricted the work of exploration. The bottom layer of the multi-layered cemetery originates from the XI century

, the others derive from later centuries, up to the fifteenth A.D. Beginning from 80 cm down, skeletal remains were found to a depth of 2 m. Owing to the all too dense stratification, the separation of the several layers was, unfortunately, utterly impossible. Furthermore, continuous burials wellnigh prohibited the excavation of graves originating from the early Árpád Age, since fresh burials had damaged the older ones (oral communication of Dr. J. NEMESKÉRI). According to the records of the Archives, BOTTYÁN excavated 18 graves from the Árpád Age and 18 further ones from the late Middle Ages, in the autumn of 1943 and the spring of 1944; indeed, excavations continued under the auspices of the National Museumheadquarters in 1949, with the successful exposure of 10 further graves from the late Middle Ages in the same site. Owing to the damages suffered by the material preserved in the cellars of the National Museum during the war,