Balogh Csilla – P. Fischl Klára: Felgyő, Ürmös-tanya. A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Monumenta Archeologica 1. (Szeged, 2010)

TROGMAYER Ottó: Verba volant

8 TROGMAYER Ottó VERBA VOLANT ...scripta manent. The saying is absolutely true, considering how many ideas are bandied around in conversation, and how few of them are actually committed to writing. Archaeologists rarely find what they actually set out to uncover - they must make do with what the earth chooses to divulge of her hidden treasures. Even so, it is sometimes possible to assemble a tiny fragment of the vast mosaic of the past, made up of many millions of tiny stones, but only after as many stones as possible have been laboriously sought out and painstakingly fitted into their place. The team undertaking the publication of the finds and documentation of the excavations at Felgyő conducted by Gyula László over twenty-two years ago set itself the task of working on the mosaic of the Avar period. There have been few excavations since the 1950s about which so many preliminary reports, working hypotheses and theories have been published as the rescue excavation conducted across the plots and streets of the newly built settlement. Several generations of archaeology students learnt the tricks of their trade during the successive campaigns at this site. Their participation in this project provides the much-needed eyewitness testimony of the excavations because Professor László has departed from us over a decade ago. Great determination is needed to assemble and edit the chronicle of the long days spent in the field. The team members, Csilla Balogh, Elek Benkő, Klára P. Fischl and Gabriella Vörös, could confidently rely on the vivid accounts and recollections of their senior colleagues, Csanád Bálint, Katalin B. Nagy and Júlia Kovalovszki, who had at the time participated in the excavations conducted over thirty years ago. The studies presented here can provide an answer to the exciting question of whether the Geda mound was raised during the Copper Age or whether it was an Árpádian Age site, whether a part of the mysterious ditches were dug during the Copper Age, and to the no less exciting issues of whether there is any interrelation between the Avar cemetery and the Árpádian Age settlement, whether there were any Slavic inurned cremation burials or whether the urns had been buried during the Bronze Age. As the director of the county's museums in the 1970s, I was honoured with the task of securing the funds for the excavations and of publishing the catalogues to several exhibitions of Gyula László, who had also promised to publish the final report on the Felgyő excavations in the yearbook of the Móra Ferenc Museum of Szeged. While the manuscript was never completed, it is to my great pleasure that the first volume of the Monumenta series, presenting the most important findings of the Felgyő excavations, will be published in Szeged. Despite the many decades' delay, this volume, published on the initiative and through the work of my students, marks an important milestone in the presentation of the finds which lay all but forgotten in a museum storeroom. Like most of my archaeologist colleagues, I too have many debts, some of which will remain unredeemed. The Monumenta series was designed to contribute towards the redemption of the many decades' long debts towards the archaeological community, the very first of which is the study by Csilla Balogh and Klára P. Fischl on the Bronze Age and Avar finds from the excavations conducted by Gyula László at Felgyő, Ürmös-tanya. I wish to offer my heartfelt thanks to the editors for their conscientious work. Szeged-Budapest, December 22, 2009 Ottó Trogmayer Trogmayer Ottó H-1043 Budapest Erzsébet u. 18. E-mail: toto34@chello.hu