Miklós Kásler - Zoltán Szentirmay (szerk.): Identifying the Árpád Dynasty Skeletons Interred in the Matthias Church. Applying data from historical, archaeological, anthropological, radiological, morphological, radiocarbon dating and genetic research (Budapest, 2021)
CHAPTER THREE – Archaeological, anthropological and radiological data
During a presentation at the János Érdy memorial meeting, Piroska Biczó addressed the matter of the ground layers of the excavations of 1848 in detail (Biczó 1999). New excavations were started in the area of the grave: “while working, wall plaster crumbled below in the ground layer stood out to him immediately” he writes and then goes on to list the layers that followed each other during the excavation. The half-sentence “while working, wall plaster crumbled below in the ground layer stood out to him immediately” suggests that besides the area uncovered by earthworks, Érdy had begun exploring new layers not yet disturbed. Based on the drawing of the recovered artifacts, which depicts the third pillars southern stone base, which survives to this day, the grave sites which have since been destroyed can be accurately reconstructed. Two drawings of the layers explored survive to this day: a colour pen drawing by Varsányi, stored in the Hungarian National Museum Historical Records Archive, and the drawing in Érdys (1853) publication inspired by the former. The draft of the sectional view was probably drawn at the site, but it has been lost. Érdy had travelled to Fehérvár, along with the drawings author, Varsányi, “ who as an engineer and a clever sketch artist, had accompanied me to many archaeological exploits of mine already”. The technical style of the colour pen drawing and the publication’s drawing is identical; however, the colour drawing contains more letters to denote the differences between the layers, but does not elaborate on them, and we do not hear more about them in Érdys written legacy either. The drawing that was published is not as rich in data as it could have been, but it does contain all the essentials. The drawings significance lies in the fact that in the area of the southern aisle, the succession of layers are described in a way that 69
