Petercsák Tivadar – Váradi Adél szerk.: A népvándorláskor kutatóinak kilencedik konferenciája : Eger, 1998. szeptember 18-20. / Heves megyei régészeti közlemények 2. (Eger, 2000)
Fragments of Cemeteries from the 10-11th centuries and Medieval Settlement at Győr-Homokgödrök
A GYŐR-HOMOKGÖDRÖKI 10-11. SZÁZADI TEMETŐRÉSZLETEK ÉS KÖZÉPKORI TELEPÜLÉS 293 FRAGMENTS OF CEMETERIES FROM THE 10-11™ CENTURIES AND MEDIEVAL SETTLEMENT AT GYŐR-HOMOKGÖDRÖK Miklós Takács - István Paszternák One of the grave and little known losses of Hungarian medieval archaeology was the destruction of the GyőrHomokgödrök site at the end of the 19 t h century. The onetime site was situated on a long, approximately east-west directed hill, which closed an obtuse angle with the Moson branch of the Danube, east of the Káptalandomb the centre of Győr. We can have but vague ideas about the richness of the finds of the Gyárváros district established in the place of the sand hill, since a significant portion of the hill was annihilated by the clay and sand pits. Later, the still intact parts fell victims to the dinamic industrialisation of the town in the dualistic period. The constructions violated three cemeteries, one from the Iron Age, one from the Roman period and one from the 10 t h - 11 th centuries, and the place of a very large medieval settlement. The „control" of the find material recovered in masses from the site was assigned to Etel Méry, Arnold Börzsönyi and Elemér Lovas the keepers of the antiquity collection of the Benedictine secondary school in Győr, whose activity was, in fact, restricted to the collection of the easily accessible and nice finds. They reported about their result in the annuals of the secondary school in a by now hardly understandable technical language. The objects taken out of their original environment and deposited in the museum lay for decades without being taken into inventory, and got mixed in the depository. Archaeologist working in the region after World War II (Sándor Mithay, András Uzsoki, Eszter T. Szőnyi, Péter Tomka) could conduct rescue excavation on very small surfaces. These excavations could document no more than the high extent of demolition and, accordingly, very little information could be collected for the reconstruction of the earlier circumstances. At the evaluation of the old find material, the variability of the topographic specification causes a lot of uncertainties. In consequence of the varying pace of Takács Miklós MTA Régészeti Intézet 1014 Budapest Úri utca 49. Paszternák István Kulturális Örökség Igazgatósága Miskolci Kirendeltség 3530 Miskolc Erzsébet tér 2. sand and clay yielding in the various regions of the hill and the different dates of the industrial constructions, the finds collected during these operations were marked by different topographic names. At the beginning, before the start of the large investments, the region north of the Budai street (Wilhelm Pieck street in the Rákosi and Kádár eras) was called Homokgödör or Homokgödrök, and the one south of it was first called Városrét, then Új szállások. The provenance names Légszeszgyár (=Gas-works), Distillery and Waggon-works refer to the different constructions. The unification of the topographic names as suggested by us is certainly necessary because of the relatively well deducible topographic unity of the site. The significance of the site is underlined by the quantity, the quality and the topographic position of the find material. The cemeteries from the 10 t h - 11 t h centuries at the Homokgödör site join the two larger cemeteries from the Conquest period unearthed in the town (Lehel street and Téglavető dülő). The medieval vessel series of at least 94 items found in the settlement, a unique quantity in the Carpathian Basin, the many metal finds, the carved stones etc. justify the elaboration of the material of the site and its detailed publication. With the exact evaluation of the archaeological find material we would like to express our views concerning certain problems that have solidified into a common notion in a certain circle of researchers dealing with the early history of Győr. It can be read in many historical works that the „upper limit" of the existence of the one-time village in the area of the Homokgödör would be the 13 t h century: according to a document from this period, the king settled over the people of the village to Győr. The finds preserved in the museum for more than one hundred years unambiguously prove, however, that the village was intensively inhabited until the late Middle Ages. Translated by Katalin Simán
