Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 33/4. (2013)
Articles
138 E. Gáll The properly excavated grave contains the remains of a deceased person or people, but the grave goods found in the grave might be the representations of the prestige of the deceased person by the mourners and they can emphasise the importance of the family (too).7 It is quite understandable that the mourning community or family wants/wanted the deceased person to appear in shining glory when they escort/escorted him/her on their last way, in the presence of local community. So the ‘furnishing parcel’, found alongside the deceased person, was to indicate the economic potential, welfare, prestige, influence and power of the mourners and their legitimacy, and in consequence of this the acquired social position, status, rank of the deceased person.8 So we can speak of the symbolisation of the status of the deceased person, although it must be admitted that it happens in an indirect way. Therefore it might be risky to see them as the univoque reflections of the mobile, frequently changing or stagnating social positions of individuals from different social groups but it is undeniable that there must have been a close relationship between them, although, at least in theory, it might not have prevailed into modern times. It can be firmly stated that they could symbolise the last status of the deceased person, so we can talk about a static other world representation of the status the individuals of a society achieved until they died. The grave furnishing is only ‘temporarily’ visible to those who are left behind,9 but their mnemonic power is undeniable and this statement in the 10th century can absolutely be applied to the weapon and horse burials.10 In contrast with this, the outer elements of burials/cemeteries, such as the topographical location, mounds etc, and their integration into the landscape do not only affect the landscape itself but the state and identity of the community too. Based on this important socialpsychological aspect, the topographical location of the burials seems to be connected to the level of organisation in a community and to symbolise the social differences between communities or groups of people.11 7 For example: Harke 2000; Parker Pearson 2001. 8 In this sense we can cite Parker Pearsons words: ‘Tombs are not just somewhere to put bodies: they are representations of power. Like ritual, funerary architecture legitimizes and extends the hegemonic order’. Parker Pearson 2001,196. 9 Effros 2003, 175. 10 Hoilund Nielsen 1997, 129-148. 11 In the 19th century in Gämbas, besides the two big cemeteries (the Calvinist and the Orthodox) there was the graveyard of the Zeyk family containing a few graves. From this point of view see: Effros 2003, 122. However, we have to draw attention to the fact that each society, each community and micro community construes their own values, including the practices connected to burial customs. Therefore each micro region, each cemetery and within them every single grave should be analysed in its own context, ‘its own world’. Therefore the question may arise whether in each grave with a weapon a warrior can be suspected or it is just a distinct feature of the above mentioned picture of the netherworld or a burial custom. At the same time we should pay attention to another threat, namely that in the early Middle Ages the graves without furnishings might not reflect a true picture of a whole civilisation, they can represent a dynamically changing picture of the other world in a society, and provide an archaeological picture of death as a phenomenon.12 For instance the Christian conception of the other world, which led to unfurnished graves, did not mean that the Christian societies were poorer than their predecessors.13 Therefore the grave goods placed in the graves or left outside later also indicate the ideological discontinuity of funerary rites in the 10th and 11th centuries. It is very important when comparing and analysing the burial customs of the ‘pagan’ 10th century and those of the Christian era (11th-13th century) that the grave goods placed in the graves or left out later indicate an ideological discontinuity of funerary rites in these three centuries. It might mean a mental change in the picture of the after life, which, little by little, might have changed the concept of the other world of the community. This after life picture from the 11th century was changed radically by Christianity. The received burial rite in the 11th-13th centuries, according to the Christian standards, was the skeleton burial. The cremation burial rite, known in previous centuries, disappeared in the 9th century or at least became undetectable by archaeological means.14 Concerning the state of the spirit and the body between death and parusia, according to the Christian notion, a human being is the substantive combination of the soul and the body subsisting at a certain ontological level. In the investigated period, it was a widespread Christian opinion that in death the soul is separated from the body, the body perishes and the soul lives on and at the time 12 Marthon 2005, 2. 13 Rush 1941. 14 In this sense, see: Gáli 2010, 375-378.
