Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 8.-9. 1967-1968 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1968)
Tanulmányok – Abhandlungen - Éry Kinga, K.: Reconstruction on the tenth Century Population of Sárbogárd on the Basis of Archaeoloogical and Anthropological Data. – A sárbogárdi X. századi közösség rekonstrukciója régészeti és embertani adatok alapján. VIII–IX, 1967–68. p. 93–147. t. XXVI–XLV.
strike-a-light, buckle, bit, egg, brown-girdled snail and animal bone are not adequate for a more exact dating. The wooden harness and the flaked arrowhead are objects entirely unknown from the treated period. Taking into consideration the peculiarities of the burial rites and the finds, the beginning and end of the use of the cemetery can be approximately determined on account of the following reasons : a) As it was noted earlier the cemetery lies on the longitudinal axis of a sand mount jutting out like an island into the surrounding area. The longitudinal axis of this mound is simultaneously the highest level in the area. Human graves 33, 5, 24 and 29 as well as calf grave A, horse graves В and С and grave 63 containing one man and two horses were also buried on this highest level. Since the objects of the mentioned graves are found in the Central Danube Basin the earliest in 896 we regard these graves to be the earliest ones. The same holds for the animal graves. The burial of the complete body of a horse, a custom which was probably brought along by the community from its home previous to the conquest and which did not become established in the area of Hungary also demarks the first years —at most the first decade —of the new settlement. According to A. Kralovánszky, it is very likely that the calf is buried in the first grave of the cemetery. 33 On the basis of all of the above I date The demographic analysis of the Sárbogárd population was made with the aid of the relevant Hungarian literature. 36 The most important demographic data are illustrated by the abridged life table (Table 3). Table 4 introduces some demographic features of the Sárbogárd population in comparison to a few series from Hungary dated to between the 10th and 16th centuries. The excavation of the cemetery of Sárbogárd revealed 36 males, 30 females and 34 children (0—14 years of age). The distribution of the deceased among the different age groups shows that first of all the number of children who died between 0 and 4 years of age is less than the number of those dying between 5 and 9 years of age (Figure 20). This proportion, however, seems incorrect. Even among the health conditions of the Twentieth Century the mortality of those between 0 and 4 years is higher than the 5—9 year old group. Such a disproportion can be noted in other places as well. A few authors attribute the low number of children in the cemeteries to the possibility that they were not buried within the common cemetery. I do not hold with such an assumption for if the bodies of children were not buried by a community in the common cemetery for some theoretical reasons, then consequently no children should be found in these cemeteries. Up to now we do not know of cemeteries completely за A. KRALOVÁNSZKY: Mezőgazd. Múz. Közi. 1 (1964) 171-184. 34 A. KRALOVÁNSZKY: Arch. Ért. 84 (1957) 175-186; id.: Arch. Ért. 86(1959)76-82. 35 Gy. LÁSZLÓ: AUSB 4 (1962) 29-53. se J. NEMESKÉRI-D. SCHRANZ-Gy. ACSÁDI: Biol. Közi. 1 (1957) 47-80; Gy. ACSÁDI-J. NEMESKÉRI-L. HARSÁNYI: Acta Arch. Hung. 11 (1959) 419-455; Gy. ACSÁDI-L. HARSÁNYI-J. NEMESKÉRI: Acta Arch. Hung. 14 (1962) 113-141; J. NEMESKÉRI-Sz. NOZDROVICZKY: Anthr. Hung. 6 (1963) 134-136; Gy. ACSÁDI: Tört. Stat. Évkönyv (1963-64) 3-34; GY. ACSÁDI-J. NEMESKÉRI: Homo 8 (1957) 133-148. the beginning of the cemetery to 900, a round number for the sake of simplicity. b) Both the intrinsic analysis of the cemetery and the topographical features justify the assumption that as we depart from the graves located at the highest level towards those lying lower down we also advance in time. Since the cemetery developed towards the south and somewhat towards the east, or rather towards the edges,, the outermost graves were likely dug the most recently. The hair-ring ending in an "s" and the half-moon shaped pendant which in form represent the earliest types and which appeared in the last third of the 10th century also occur in the outermost graves. 34 There is one more missing object which dates the end of the cemetery : no Hungarian coin of the Árpád period was found in the cemetery. This of course may mean that money had no role in the burial rites of the community but it is more likely that while the cemetery was in use the circulation of coins of the Árpád period had not yet begun. According to the data gained from early Árpád age cemeteries discovered in other areas of the country money very soon plays a role in the burial rites. The cemetery was certainly not in use in Sárbogárd either when Prince Géza or Saint Stephen began to issue the first coins. 35 On the basis of all these I date the end of the cemetery to the period between 970 and 990. without children in the Carpathian Basin. (Naturally only the completely excavated cemeteries can be taken into consideration.) It is more likely that a certain percentage of children Fig. 20. Distribution of the dead by age groups (d x ) III. DEMOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS 111
