Folia archeologica 1-2.

Leszih Andor: Borsodmegyei szkíta leletek

84 LESZIH: SCYTHIAN FINDS FROM THE COUNTY OF BORSOD work and were probably the deposits of urngraves. But it was impossible to determine more exactly their groupings. Apart from the stray finds, 33 urngraves or the remains of such, came to light. In eleven graves were, besides urn and mug, a lid-dish as well. In three were quadrangular stone slabs, on which the urn had been placed. There were two such graves in which the burnt remains were covered only by a dish. In the digging of the graves there was no regularity whatever, and frequently the urns were in the immediate neighbourhood of each other. They had not been dug deep, the average is 40—60 cm, never reaching 1 m. The deposits were for the most part put beside the urn. The vessels containing the burnt bones and remains are very varied and besides the urn of usual type occur mugs, vessels in flower-pot shape, dishes, etc. The vessels of seven graves were made on the wheel, thus these derive from the La Téne period, the others mostly indicate Hallstatt type. The mugs are characterised by the high handle. Urngrave 9 can be classified as Vandal on account of the swastika ornament on one vessel, as well as grave 10. Prof. M. Jahn (Breslau) who assigns the bronze spur found in the vicinity of grave 15 to the third century A. D., places the iron knife which was found in grave 10/a to the Early Germanic period. An unusually big knife also occurred in grave 5, but as the haft of it is missing and as it has remained only in fragments its complete form can not be pricisely reconstructed. Up to the present these large and such shaped knives have not occurred either among the Scythian finds, or among those of the Hallstatt or La Téne period, parallel with the former. These finds and the Roman silver denarius (Trajanus) show that the settling of the Germanic tribes on this area can be demonstrated. So it seems that the Kocsmadomb at Muhi had been inhabited for a long time or rather it had been used as a burial place, and Muhi puszta, which spread beside it, and which often yielded in various parts a great quantity of prehistoric finds, had been the halting-place for the passing Germanic tribes in the centuries A. D. It does not strictly belong to this report to enumerate the Germanic finds of the County of Borsod. I am therefore only mentioning that not far from the Kocsmadomb, likewise in the surroundings of ihe village of Muhi, behind the castle of Baron Pál Urbán at Jászoltó dülő a beautiful gold ring (11-85 gr) deriving from the third century A. D. was found with a Medusa-head stone carved from chalcedony in a thick barbaric mounting, probably of later date. At the time of acquiring the ring we undertook an experimental excavation around the site, where we found nothing, but not far from that site we found the traces of a settlement: some sherds in an ash-layer and a regularly shaped mug with finger-tip ornamentation around its high rim. Grave III on account of it being an individual inhumation burial on the hill, and beads being found there, it can not be enumerated among the Scythian finds. It is true that, as I have mentioned before, Béla Posta wrote in his work of a bead with similar ornamentation as one of these beads, but he did not consider it as classifiable in the Scythian group of antiquities. Thus we can not difinitely attribute Scythian character to our beads either. Perhaps they derive from the Iron Age, but they may also derive from the Migration Period. The urn which had fallen into small fragments was immediately above the skull. It is probable that the urn belonged to an inhumation interment, and that there was also a secondary burial in the same grave. However, we several times obtained stray finds from the Kocsmadomb. Disregarding the other finds I am only mentioning an iron axe-adze (length 16-5 cm) and a bronze bell (Fig. 5, no. 1, height 8-5 cm). The bell is a very fine regular work of square form at the bottom (5 cm), narrowing like a cone towards the top, where a hemispherical loop for suspension is applied. In its interior is an iron loop for suspending the tongue. It differs from the bells belonging to the finds of Gyöngyös (Arch. Ért. 1908, p. 41, pl. I, figs. 1—5) in that the body of the former is not round but square, and its tongue could have been a small rod or globe, suspended on an iron hook, while the end of the tongue emerged at the top of the bell through the hole under the loop, and turned outwards in several forks and suspended on them. A similar specimen is published by Béla Posta.

5 The bell is said to have been found 1.5 m deep in the land-slide. We received from a private collection as stray finds three clay vessels from urngraves found on the Kocsmadomb (Pl. IV. figs. 4—6), The largest urn (height 31 cm, diam. at the mouth 15 cm) with a slightly everted rim, and