Balogh Csilla – P. Fischl Klára: Felgyő, Ürmös-tanya. A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Monumenta Archeologica 1. (Szeged, 2010)
The Avar Cemetery at Felgyő, Ürmős-Tanya
A Felgyő , Ünnös-tanyai avar kori temető 261 THE AVAR CEMETERY AT FELGYÖ, ÜRMÖS-TANYA Csilla BALOGH In autumn I960, Gyula László planned to investigate the ploughland beside Csizmadia-tanya, near the location of the 1957 campaign. While making the necesasary preparations for the excavations, he learnt that a Bronze Age urn had come to light on the right side of the dirt track leading to János Ürmös's farmstead a few years earlier. Sections of an Early Árpádian Age ditch system had been uncovered nearby in 1955 and an east to west oriented burial was uncovered in spring 1960 on the left side of the dirt track, which was backfilled. While waiting for the arrival of the excavation equipment, László decided to open a few trenches in order to establish whether there was an Avar burial ground near Ürmös-tanya. He uncovered Graves 1-8 of the Bronze Age cemetery and Graves 1-8 of the Avar burial ground. He continued the investigation of these two cemeteries in 1961-1962, 1971-1974 and 1976-1977, uncovering a total of 312 burials: 72 inurned burials, 14 crouched inhumation burials (perhaps dating from the Bronze Age), 5 Sarmatian and 216 Avar period burials. The trenches of the excavations lay beside the dirt track leading to the farmstead, on the eastern side of the tarmac road between Csanytelek and Felgyö (BALOGH-P. FISCHL 2010, Fig. 10). A smaller, 10 m by 1 m large trial trench was opened on the western side of the tarmac road; while we know that Avar graves were also uncovered in this trench, its exact location can no longer be identified from the surviving documentation and neither could it be located during the excavation conducted in spring 2009. Although the main purpose of László's excavation was the investigation of the Árpádian Age village, and the Avar burials were regarded as a "by-product" of the excavations, each grave was photographed and drawn, and a more or less detailed description of each burial was recorded in the field diary. Nothing is known about Graves 24, 91, 115-116, 192, 206 and 209: neither the grave goods, nor the skeletal remains have survived, and there is nothing about these burials in the surviving documentation, save for a photo of Grave 24. Graves 182 and 183 were not excavated "owing to the lack of time", but the soil marks outlining the grave pits were marked on the cemetery plan. The location of Graves 24, 115, 184-205 and 209 is not known. The finds from the burials were taken to the museum in Szentes. A part of the animal bones from the burials were taken to the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture, where János Matolcsy performed the species identification in 1978. Sadly, nothing is known about the greater part of the animal bone sample. Similarly, only the skeletal remains from 166 graves have survived, housed in the Anthropological Department of Szeged University. THE LOCATION AND LAYOUT OF THE CEMETERY The cemetery lies 6 km south-west of Csongrád, on the western bank of the Vidre Stream. The site is located on the eastern outskirts of Felgyö, on both sides of the Szeged road, in line with milestone 52. The one-time Ürmös farmstead (Ürmös-tanya) lay some 100 m east of the road. The 216 Avar graves lay over an area of ca. 50 m by 160 m. The boundaries of the burial ground could be securely identified in the north, north-west, south and south-east; however, it seems quite certain that additional burials still lie in the other directions (BALOGH P. FISCHL 2010, Fig. 50). The graves formed south-west to north-east oriented irregular rows. Incomplete rows with few graves and empty areas between the burials can be seen in the cemetery's southern part. The reason for this is that the trenches opened in 1974 lay in this area: the combined map of the 1974 campaign is missing and thus nothing is known about the location of Graves 184-205. Graves cutting through each other were documented in five cases. A major difference in orientation could only be noted in the case of Graves 29 and 30. It is difficult to reconstruct the relation between these two burials because the description in the field diary and the stratigraphic position of the graves as shown on the map are at variance with each other (Fig. 1). The left arm bones of the deceased in Grave 29 were dislodged from their original position, suggesting that Grave 29 was the earlier burial which had been disturbed when Grave 30 was dug. ORIENTATION OF THE BURIALS Nothing is known about the orientation of 12 graves (5.5%). Only the main direction of alignment is known in the case of 16 burials (7.5%) and data on orientation with a precision of degrees is available for 188 graves (87%). Most of the excavated burials were north-west to south-east oriented (58.5%), and there was a conspicuously high percentage of graves aligned north north-west to south south-east (29%). Four graves had a north to south orientation (2%), five had been aligned west-north-west to south south-east (2.5%), two had a west to east orientation (1%) and one had been oriented north north-east to south-south-west (0.5%). Two burials had a reverse orientation (1%; Diagram 1). The north north-west to south-south-east orientation of burials is not particularly frequent in the Carpathian Basin. It has been recorded in two regions during two different periods: in the Danube-Tisza Interfluve during the Early Avar period (alongside north to south oriented burials) and in the Little Hungarian Plain during the Late Avar period, when graves with this orientation became increasingly widespread (TOMKA 1975,60). Because these orientations do not correspond to the main points of the compass, their interpretation runs into difficulties. Attempts to link this burial alignment to grave orientations toward one of the main points of the compass proved unsuccessful. What seems certain is that the community using the burial ground followed a consistent practice of orientation, suggesting that this alignment had some particular meaning for the community.
