A Herman Ottó Múzeum évkönyve 49. (2010)

Wolf Mária-Horváth Antónia: Középkori templom és temető Alsózsolca határában

14th century. The papal tithe registers (1332-1355) mention the church of Kemej dedicated to St. George. Two graves were uncovered in the church and 104 burials in the graveyard around the church. The graveyard was strongly disturbed. The form of the grave pits could rarely be observed. The finds indicate that the use of coffins had been widespread. A chest-like open coffin placed with its upper part toward the ground was uncovered in Grave 103. About 16 per cent of the burials contained grave goods, all of which represented costume accessories such as headdresses, headdress mounts, dress fasteners, buckles, finger-rings and pins. Similar articles were also found scattered across the area of the graveyard. A headdress adorned with beads and clasps uncovered in Grave 103 can be dated to the early 16th century on the strength of comparable finds. One rare find, dating from the early 15th century, is the fragment of a monstrance discovered in the sacristy. The finds from the cemetery indicate that the church was used from the 14th to the early 17th century. This is also confirmed by the written sources. According to a document recording the visitation of the church, the church was still active around 1608. The village soon became deserted owing to the repeated Turkish attacks and the church probably fell into disuse judging from the fact that it is no longer mentioned in the sources. The church was probably destroyed by fire, indicated by the burnt coffin and burnt bones in Grave 91 (lying in the church's interior), the burnt, sooty stones of the collapsed arch and the destruction layer uncovered on the outer side of the sacristy. Mária Wolf-Antónia Horváth 185