Majorossy Judit: Egy történelmi gyilkosság margójára. Merániai Gertrúd emlékezete, 1213 - 2013. Tanulmánykötet - A Ferenczy Múzeum kiadványai, A. sorozat: Monográfiák 2. (Szentendre, 2014)

I. - Szabó Péter: A pilisi királyi erdő a középkorban

Péter Szabó: The Royal Forest of Pilis in the Middle Ages

Figure 3

Medieval settlements in Pilis.

(Dots: settlements mentioned in written documents. Circles: settlements located through field surveys, not mentioned in written sources.)

There were two areas where the ‘purely-archaeologicaT settlements largely outnumbered the documented ones. One of them is the region of today’s Pomáz, the other is the valley between the middle part of the Pilis Mountains (Hosszúhegy) and the south-eastern end of it (Kevélyek) together with the northern part of the valley of Pilisvörösvár, which is the south-western side of Hosszúhegy. This is partly explained by the geography of the region. The Pilis Mountains of longish limestone rise steeply from the neighbouring flat areas. Around here, the dividing line between habitable and non-habitable places is sharp. Many smaller settlements were established here in the eleventh-thirteenth centuries, in accordance with general Hungarian trends. Early settlers inhabited all possible places, but did not venture the impossible. The northern part of the region offered more possibilities for settlement expansion towards woodland. The (more) gently rolling slopes would have been manageable for medieval settlers, as some sites within the hills amply demonstrate. However, very few sites have been found in these places. Providing that all this is not the result of survey techniques, it seems probable that whoever owned the woods preferred them uninhabited. The overall impression settlement historical research provides is that woodland cover was by and large stable in Pilis throughout the Middle Ages.

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