Szilasi Ágota, H. (szerk.): Annales Musei Agriensis. Agria LII. (Eger, 2019)
Évinger Sándor: Gyöngyösön feltárt Árpád-kori és kora újkori temetkezések embertani vizsgálata
Sándor Évinger ANTHROPOLOGICAL EXAMINATION OF THE ÁRPÁDIAN AGE AND EARLY MODERN PERIOD BURIAL SITE FINDS FROM GYÖNGYÖS I examined the skeletal remains of 14 people from the graves unearthed next to the Saint John Church in Gyöngyös in the autumn of 2017. Half of the deceased were sub-adults (4 infans 1,1 infans II and 2 juvenis), while the majority of the adults were females (5 women and 2 men). One of the adult females (Grave 31 ) originated from an 18th century burial, so it was not part of the Árpádian Age section of the cemetery. The scattered materials also included the skeletal remains of at least 15 people: 10 adults and 5 sub-adults. Due to the small number of skeletal elements, in my view, the currently available remains of the Árpádian Age population are not suitable for statistical analysis, metric, morphological or demographic comparison. Regarding pathological changes, detected in the examined remains, as well as bone characteristics suggesting certain lifestyles or cultural elements, the most notable finds are those of a man in Grave 21, where we found signs of symbolic trepanation, and a spine section from the scattered fragments with traces of bone tuberculosis. As far as we know^ symbolic trepanation as a custom became much less frequent after the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian basin (probably simultaneously with converting to Christianity), but it still occurred in the first half of the Árpádian Age. This case is an example of that. Untreated TB can spread to cause bone tuberculosis (in around 3-5% of cases). Since it is an infectious disease, our discovery indirectly suggests that it may have had affected the Árpádian Age community, living at the current territory of Gyöngyös. 359
