A Nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum évkönyve 41. - 1999 (Nyíregyháza, 1999)

Régészet - Eszter Istvánovits: Tiszavasvári-Városföldje, Jegyző-tag. A settlement of the 5th century

Tiszavasvári-Városföldje, Jegyző-tag. A settlement of the 5th century 1998/A.6

1). According to István Bona no fibula shape similar to ours appears in the Carpathian basin before the 430s (BONA 1979.316, BONA 1991.196). It was found in the fill of the house, so on the basis of the cicada fibula our strictly one-level settlement can be dated to the turn of the 4th-5th centuries - first half of the 5th century. I do not know the precise analogy of the fibula. The closest piece to be mentioned is from Neviodunum/Drnovo (VINSKI 1957.140, Abb. 14). Bit Among the metal objects a special attention has to be attributed to two foal bits from house 7. Their characteristic feature are the big rings (8.2 cm and 9.5 cm). The mouth-piece is jointed, one of them is about 16 cm, the other one is fragmented. The outspread length of the first piece is about 37 cm, the smaller one is about 30-35 cm (Pl. XLII.3, XLIII). Horse graves are rather rare both in the Great Hungarian Plain and in Transdanubia in the Imperial Age. This explains why we have only scarce finds of bits despite of the fact that they had to be in common use. From the Great Hungarian Plain we can mention bits from the following sites:

17 - Geszteréd: According to the description a foal bit consisting of a pair of rings of finger thickness. Their diameter was 6' (sic!), that means that the diameter of the side rings could be about 12 cm. - Hévízgyörk, grave 28: Bits ending in rings. The jointed mouth-piece was made of bars with rectangular cross-section, the rings have a round cross-section. At one of the rings there is a 1.4-1.5 cm wide remain of the belt bound at the iron. The outspread length is 35 cm, the mouth-piece is 15.7 cm long, the length of the pieces are 8.4 cm and 8.9 cm, the side-rings are 11.511.6 cm big (DINNYÉS 1991.156, 15.U7). - Hortobágy-Poroshát, barrow group 2, grave 10: bit ending in rings. The diameter of the rings is 7 cm. The length of the jointed mouth-pieces is 7.6 and 9.5 cm (the latter is broken and fragmented). The outspread length is about 26 cm (ZOLTAI 1941.274. III.t.28). - Szentes-Sárgapart, grave 30: among gravearticles there was a horse skull with a bit in its mouth, 3 fragments of which have been preserved (PÁRDUCZ 1950.11. site l,XIX.t.2-4). - Szilágysomlyó?/§imleu Silvaniei: István Bona found in the storage room of the Déri Museum (Deb17. Recently they were collected by István Dinnyés (DINNYÉS 1991.156) in the course of the evaluation of the piece from Hévízgyörk. Here I added some new data to his catalogue. 18. Kind oral information by archaeozoologist István Vörös (Hungarian National Museum). recen) a box with uninventoried objects. A piece of paper with the word "Szilágysomlyó" accompanied the box. Beside a shield boss dated to the end of the 4th - beginning of the 5th century and other objects, I. Bona made the drawing of a bit ending in rings and with jointed mouth-piece. The diameter of the rings was 8 cm (BONA 1961.199,7. kép 3). I did not succeed in finding these objects in the Déri Museum. -Újhartyán: Its mouth-piece jointed in the middle consisted of two, 12.8 cm long pieces, the diameter of the rings was 10 cm. The object was lost (BONA 1961.193, 1. kép 2, 2. kép 3). - Vizesdpuszta, grave 4 (VADAY 1986.204. note II, 209). The object was lost. We can mention bits also from the material of the Hun Age of the Carpathian basin (e.g. BudapestZugló, Keszthely-Gátidomb, Lengyeltóti-Gyógyszertár, Léva/Levice-Téglagyár, Pannonhalma-Széldomb, Pécsüszög, Szeged-Nagyszéksós - BÓNA 1991.277,279-280, Taf. 45,64,66,70,73). However, we have to exclude these pieces from the circle of our examination, because all of them belong to the type of bits with cheek-piece. Returning to the foal bit with rings, the ones from Szentes and Hortobágy can be characterized by small side rings, so they stand far from the piece from Tiszavasvári. At the same time the side ring of the bits from Geszteréd and Tiszavasvári is strikingly large. A similar one can be mentioned from Zengővárkony, where a jointed bit with 7 cm long parts was found in grave 4 of cemetery II. The "inner size" of the side rings is 11 cm (DOMBAY 1957.197, VHLt.17). These two kinds of bits - the one with small or the one with big rings - are suitable for basically different kinds of riding practice and suggest absolutely different techniques of directing the horse.

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. Two bits from Tiszavasvári can be placed somewhere in the middle between the two types. The same is the case with the pieces from Újhartyán and Szilágysomlyó similar in proportions and size. The size of the mouth-piece is almost the same with ones from Geszteréd and Hévízgyörk, but the size of the rings does not reach the diameter of 10 cm. In the course of evaluation of the bit from Újhartyán István Bona was at the following opinion: "We do not know such pieces from the heritage of the eastern riders. The foal bit ending in a large ring is a typical European product. Its origin can be searched in the Early Iron Age, in our territory it was spread by the Celts... In the 1st century B.C. Germanic tribes overtook it from the Celts." (BONA 1961.198) In the reality similar bits have been found also in the Sarmatian material of the steppe: e.g. in the late 181