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

The Bronze Age settlement and cemetery at Felgyő

A felgyői bronzkori temető és település 117 The small cup was placed on the shoulder of the urn in one grave and on the handle in another, with the larger cover bowl placed on top of these (Graves 22 and 23). These two graves were unusual in other respects too. Grave 22 was one of the burials containing metal finds. According to the description, the fragments of a bowl were found inside the urn, perhaps the remains of a smaller bowl set atop the urn. The form and decoration of the urn from Grave 23, recalling the urns of the later Nagyrév period, are unparalleled, without any exact analogies either in the Nagyrév or in the Vatya ceramic inventory."* Of the three burials containing metal artefacts, only the metal artefacts have survived from Graves 1 and 2. According to the description of the graves, the pins had been placed in the urn. The field diary notes that the urn of Grave 2 had been covered with a bowl. Both graves lay in the area where erosion had damaged the burials. The urn of Grave 22, containing two pins, had been covered with two vessels and the cup lay not inside the urn, but on its shoulder. This burial stands out from among the other graves owing to the double covering of the urn, the unusual placement of the cup and the metal grave goods. The single other non-ceramic grave good aside from the metal finds was the whetstone from Grave 19. Unfortunately, the description of the grave does not mention either the whetstone or the cup inventoried as coming from this burial, only the urn, and thus this piece of information is also rather uncertain. It is clear from the above that the cemetery was not wholly excavated. The surviving documentation is incomplete and thus the examination of the different burial practices and their proportion did not yield meaningful results. The various burial practices appear to occur in roughly the same proportion in the evaluable burials. Grave 22 was the single more unusual burial in the cemetery. The following is known concerning the fourteen inhumation burials (Table 1; BALOGH P. FISCHL2010, Figs 44-45). It is uncertain whether these burials can be dated to the Bronze Age. Graves 33, 142, 144 and 145 can be securely dated to the Bronze Age in view of their grave goods. Grave 44 can also be assigned here, based on the description in the field diary. The cultural attribution of Grave 14 is uncertain: the finds from the burial date from the Bronze Age, but the association between the burial and the finds was questioned in the field diary too. The dating of Graves 28, 34 and 35 is likewise uncertain. According to Attila Kiss, the latter grave was described as dating to the Bronze Age by János Nemeskéri, but this dating was not confirmed by Gyula László. The cultural attribution of Graves 45 and 60 is also uncertain. The grave pottery from the latter can no longer be found; the patch of the grave, however, was more typical for Avar burials. Graves 210 and 211 did not yield any finds apart from indistinct pottery sherds, and thus their date is also uncertain. The field diary notes that a cup of the Bronze Age Urnfield culture was recovered from Grave 237, but this cup can no longer be found. The orientation of the patch of Graves 14, 28, 33, 34 and 60 was identical. Grave 45 too had the same orientation, but its patch was rounder. In contrast. Grave 44, which could be securely dated to the Bronze Age according to the field diary, had an entirely different orientation. Graves 142, 144 and 145 appear to have been pit burials. The above graves all lay in one zone within the Avar cemetery (BALOGH-P. F1SCHL 2010, Fig. 44). Knowing that the crouched inhumation burials of the Vatya culture do not follow the same pattern either regarding their orientation, or the burial rite, it is possible that the crouched inhumation burials found among the Bronze Age inurned burials can all be assigned to the Bronze Age. Graves 210, 211 and 237 formed a separate cluster lying farther from the Bronze Age cemetery. The Vatya cemeteries in the Felgyö and the Csongrád area can without exception be dated to the later Vatya period (Vatya 3-Koszider). The cemeteries were biritual: in addition to inhumation burials, they contained scattered and inurned cremation burials, although the proportion of the inhumation graves was very low compared to the cremation graves. Several explanations have been proposed for this phenomenon (G. SZÉNÁSZKY 1977; V. SZABÓ 1997; P. FISCHL 1999). Aside from the inhumation burials in the Vatya cemetery uncovered in Dunaújváros, the earlier known biritual burial grounds of the Vatya culture all lay east of the Danube and most scholars regarded these cemeteries as a reflection of the culture's eastward expansion during the late Vatya phase. More recently, however, a biritual cemetery has been discovered west of the Danube at Páty-Alsóhegy, where a few inhumation burials lay among the graves of the Koszider period (REPISZKY 2005, 265). The discovery of similar biritual cemeteries in Transdanubia thus seems likely not only east of the Danube, but in Transdanubia too. The chronological position and cultural attribution of the features and finds of the Bronze Age cemetery at Felgyö confirm the observation made earlier (P. FISCHL 1999) that there is no need for assuming the appearance of new "ethnic groups" with a distinct pottery style in the biritual cemeteries established immediately before and during the Koszider period. A glance at the plan of the Felgyö cemetery reveals that the graves of individuals interred according to different burial rites do not form separate clusters within the cemetery, and neither do the burials containing vessels in the Encrusted Pottery style or the Maros style form separate groups. The cemetery plan conforms to the other biritual burial grounds of the Vatya culture: the cremation and inhumation graves lay next to each other and there was no apparent correlation between the burial rite and the deposition of artefacts characterising other cultures. The different burial rites noted in the Felgyö cemetery conform to the pattern observed in the other cemeteries from the close of the Middle Bronze Age uncovered in the area (Csanytelek-Palé, Csongrád-Vidre-sziget) and in the entire distribution of the late Vatya culture (Páty, Kelebia, Dunaújváros).