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

The archaeobotanical remains from Gyula László 's excavation at Felgyő in 1971

458 GYULAI Ferenc THE ARCHAEOBOTANICAL REMAINS FROM GYULA LASZLÓS EXCAVATION AT FELGYŐ IN 1971 Ferenc GYULAI The arehaeobotanical material from Gyula László's excavations at Felgyő in 1971 was discovered during the cataloguing of the Miklós Freeh's bequest, housed in the Natural History Collection of the Balaton Museum in Keszthely. Miklós Frech', known better to the scientific community by his pen name, Miklós Füzes, worked as the museum's senior researcher. The inscriptions on the five phials indicated that the samples had been collected by the archaeologist excavating the site. Aside from the inscription on the phials, there is no information whatsoever about the find circumstances or about whether the remains came from one or several soil samples, or whether they had been collected as part of systematic or random sampling. We may only assume that the seed remains were extracted by flotation. This archaeobotanical sample probably reached the Balaton Museum as a result of the excellent work relations between László and Freeh'. The identification of the seeds, initially begun by Freeh', was completed in 2009. The seeds were examined using a stereo binocular microscope and identified using a reference collection. The plant remains from Felgyő all come from domestic plants. Most represent various parts of cereals: the grains or fragments thereof. The remains are all charred, suggesting that a larger amount of grain had burnt and the grains under the burnt grains had become charred through indirect reduction. We tried to determine the age of the seeds from their findspot. The ditch system investigated during the 1971 campaign can most likely be assigned to the early Árpádian Age. The plant remains in the sample were most likely grown locally. The cereal rachis fragments indicate that the harvested cereals had been processed locally. The plants cultivated at Felgyő include barley (Hordeum vulgare), bread or common wheat (Triticum aestivum subsp. vulgare), club wheat (Triticum aestivum subsp. compactum) and rye (Secale cereale). Millet (Panicum miliaceum), the cereal typically grown by nomadic peoples, does not occur in the sample. Only the most developed (hexaploid) naked wheats occur in the Felgyő sample: bread wheat and club wheat. Club wheat is a subspecies of bread wheat. The spike and the grain of club wheat can be fairly easily distinguished from those of bread wheat. A few traits, however, fall into a range which makes a distinction between the two species difficult. While the nutritional value of club wheat is in some respects better than that of the foretype, its cultivation was abandoned owing to its low yields. Club wheat was never one of the dominant wheat species in this region. The grains of rye, the other dominant cereal in this region, also occur in the Felgyő sample. Rye is less sensitive to winter cold and aridity than wheat, and it also thrives on acidic soils, although it is essentially a cereal species of sandy soils. Earlier studies on the history of Hungarian plant cultivation claimed that millet was one of the most important cereals of the Conquest period and the Árpádian Age owing to the nomadic life-style of the ancient Hungarians (RAPAICS 1934; GAÁL 1978). More recent archaeobotanical studies have modified these claims to some extent. The diaspores found at Felgyő fit into the overall pattern of the period's archaeobotanical material. The cereal species identified in the Felgyő sample are more or less identical to the ones in the archaebotanical samples from other sites of the Conquest period and the early Árpádian Age. It is clear from the agronomical characteristics of the cereals from Felgyő that the ancient Hungarians of the Felgyő settlement were not nomads, but pursued a sedentary, farming life-style. The cereals cultivated by them reflect an excellent knowledge of arable fanning and of plough cultivation. Gyulai Ferenc Szent István Egyetem Környezet és Tájgazdálkodási Intézet H-2103 Gödöllő, Páter Károly u. 1. E-mail: gyulai.

ferenc@kti.szie. hu