Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 31/1. (2011)
Articles
314 Z. Soós Lj'P a rich and varied bronze material from the 14th and 16th centuries. First we would like to present the different archaeological complexes in a chronological order. To define the foundation period of the friary it was very important the identification of the 14th century friary buildings. Until now, we have identified two 14th century buildings, which were outside the area of the 15th century stone made friary. The 14th century buildings were made of wood and there were no later constructions above them, therefore we could identify their structure and so the excavated archaeological material is from a well determined chronological period. This is important not only for the history of the friary but it reveals the process of the foundation of a friary in the late middle ages. The foundation and evolution of a friary had several stages and the final result depended a lot on the financial support of the place, on the activity and importance of a friary, on the leaders of a friary, on the strategically important site selection and on the political support. In the case of the Tärgu Mures friary one can follow the whole evolution process from the early wooden phase of a smaller foundation until the construction and fortification of a large religious and pilgrimage centre of regional importance. The first identified wooden building was the LI. In 2005 the north-western corner of the 15th century friary was researched and instead of the later friary structures the foundation of the northern wall and a small plaza paved with stone was identified. The northern wall was longer than the friaries’ courtyard (Fig. 1), probably the Franciscans planned the construction of a western wing as well but for unknown reasons this never happened. Nevertheless, bellow the plaza marked with the gray colour the traces of an earlier wooden building were identified that was destroyed in a fire. The site of LI was excavated in 2005-2007 (Fig. 2). The wooden building’s floor was dug in the yellow clay, the eastern side was 1 m deepened in the soil while its western side was on the edge of the hill. The pit of the former building was filled up with the garbage resulted after the fire and it was never rebuilt; therefore all the material kept in the house remained below the ruins. This helped to establish an exact chronology and to recover precious archaeological material. Inside the building we identified a large quantity of different types of seeds, pottery (Győrfi 2008), leather fragments and even carbonized fragments of wooden tableware such as bowls and cups. Based on the large amount of seeds - mainly grain (Ciutä 2009; 2010) - and pottery material indicate that the burned wooden building served as a warehouse. Some of the architectural elements of the building were also identified, while from one of the partly carbonized roof beams we could get a sample for dendro-chronological analysis. The results were more than satisfactory; we could establish that the oak tree was cut around the year 1315. This means, that the latest by 1317 the building was standing. During the research of the % Fig. 1. The reconstruction of the Franciscan friary based on the results of the archaeological excavations and on the existing analogies (by Gergely Búzás).
