Achaeometrical Research in Hungary II., 1988

ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY - Gábor ILON: Celtic period fortifitations and an experiment to reconstruct the rampart - Gór (Vas county)

The greatest problems with this site can be summarised as follows: 1. During the course of earlier flood control works (1960s), earth was transported to the dams of the River Repce from the northern edge of the hill and earth was scraped off of its highest points. These operations as well as erosion obliterated the traces of surface constructions. A huge modern mining pit might also have destroyed important pieces of information. In addition to this mining pit earth was also deposited on the hill during the shaping of the slope. These features, however, make the dating of the ditch which crosses the hill in an east to south direction (and has been used as a dirt road until recently) impossible. To date, not even the northern slope of the ditch can be seen because of the construction of the water reservoir. 2. Devastation caused during subsequent periods should not be neglected either. *** In this study, we shall only deal with the methods of fortification used during the Celtic Period as was observed on the plateau of the hill. Before the excavations, large rampart on the hill's southern edge and the ditch near the northern edge (the latter created in the Árpád Period as supported by the excavations - Fig. 1) were already noted by József Dénes, the archaeologist who surveyed the site (a collaborator in the excavations) and by György Sándorfi, engineer (f ). The rampart could not be observed on any other part of the hill, partly because the edges were covered by vegetation {Pseudoacacia) and partly because (as was later revealed) the ramparts retained the eroded material of more than the two thousand years (Figs. 3, 5). The highest, inner part of the hill was buried and filled in. The research at the southern, large rampart (Figs 1-2) The rampart, which was heavily disturbed by modern graves, slightly rises above the hill's surface. Toward north-east and north-west it gradually and smoothly merges with the present surface of the hill. Its research was started on a week-end in 1989 following instructions by Gyula Nováki and with his active participation.

2 In order to avoid the disturbing of modern graves, a Swedish made machine-driven mechanic soil borer was used. Sondage borings were deepened on a 35m long territory at 2 m intervals. Wherever necessary, the spatial density of borings was increased. Usually we reached down to a depth of 4 to 4.5 m. The series of cores resulted in the following observations: 1. the elevation was indeed artificial, 2. the rampart has an earth-and-timber construction, 3. the fill contained sherds and fragments of daub indicative of settlement, 4. outside the rampart, there were two ditches in the hillside which impeded climbing onto the rampart (Fig. 2) and 5. no archaeological finds of dating value were found in the bore samples. Research in the northern part of the hill A. Earth-and-timber construction rampart 1. Traditional trench cutting was executed during the summer of 1991 in section A-6. Trenches measured 1 to 1.5 m in width (Figs 1, 3). In such cases, results were limited, depending on the location chosen for the trench. A pit appeared in the depth of 220 cm approximately at the inner edge of the rampart. It deepened yet another 12 cm. A horizontal timber could be recognised in the shape of a ditch west of the pit. About 50 cm He also helped in the beginning of the excavation of С 1-2 sections. I would like to express my gratitude to him. 228