Csengeriné Szabó Éva (szerk.): A Makói József Attila Múzeum Évkönyve 2. (Makó, 2018)

Régészet–Archeológia - Csengeriné Szabó Éva: V–VI. századi pásztorkészségek

CSENGERINÉ SZABÓ ÉVA

V-VI. századi pásztorkészségek

5th and 6th century shepherds' tools

The subject of the study is the collection, examination and typology of the shepherds' tools and their accompanying finds often found in Gépid cemeteries. With their processing, a more comprehensive picture can be given of the Germans’ (mostly men's) burial habits, wear and tools.

In archaeological literature, shepherding instruments, the concept taken from ethnography, cover a set of devices that are primarily related to shepherd life as an ancient profession. While making them, the shepherd collected the most necessary and at the same time most precious objects of everyday life in a single place (looped in a ring or in a small bag or purse on a belt) that he always had with him.

For Germanic peoples the most important parts of the shepherd's equipment were the chiselling steel, flints, tinder (fire tools). These were supplemented by the awl most likely used to punch leather; the tweezers for holding small things, the hone stone, sometimes the coin, and other small, fragmented, often unidentifiable tools. The great number of knives and knife blades in the tombs could also have formed the contents of the bags, but they might have also been put into the wooden or leather hangers attached to them.

The age selected for the analysis is from the last two decades of the 5th century to the second third of the 6th century. The Great Plain (mainly the Tisza region) meant the spatial framework, but apart from this some of the Transylvanian sites available in the literature were also presented as comparative materials.

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