Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 33/4. (2013)
Articles
Data concerning changes in a cemetery surrounding a medieval church 259 old one decreased and 13 percent of the graves could be dated to this period. During this period only the relatives of the wealthier members of the community were buried here, which is supported by the inventory of the graves. 22% of the burials made during this period had added objects. These graves also contained roof tile fragments, which lead us to the conclusion that the shingles were removed and the church’s roof was refitted with ceramic roof tiles during the 16th century. Most of these burials already had coffins sealed with nails, and their filling was thick and occasionally contained scattered bones. Their starting level began underneath the 18th century renovation levels and went down to a depth of 1.5-1.6 meters, often reaching into the clayey subsoil (Plate 3.1). The group of late medieval graves dated back to the period after the gothic construction. By this time pits had become deeper than in the case of earlier graves and they reached down to 1.3-1.4 meters below the gothic floor level. Their filling also contained fragments of frescos destroyed during the gothic constructions, but no traces of roof tiles. 24% of the graves date back to this period, burials with coffins became more widespread at this time, but their vast majority had still all wood coffins without nails. Their bone material was mostly in good condition. 21% of the excavated graves were found around the church built in the 14th century. The boundaries of this area ended at the floor level of the gothic construction level. These also had shallow pits, and their filling was pretty mixed and already contained traces of the demolished old church as well as mortar traces from the new one. None of these graves had any added objects, and we didn’t find any traces of coffins. We could say that the bones were in good condition, there weren’t any visible traces of them being absorbed. They were buried in a geological layer of black, thick humus. The shallow grave depths did not reach the layer of clay found beneath (Plate 8.1-2). The earliest graves dated back to the 12th— 13th century. Their pits had been dug in rather clean soil, which still contained the materials of the settlement predating the church. These graves, in relation to the floor level had been dug at a very shallow depth of about only half a meter, they were preserved in more protected areas, especially along the walls and many of them had already been disturbed during the constructions in the 14th century (Plate 7.1-3). Only 7% of the excavated graves belonged to this period. The dispersal of these graves within the surface of the cemetery is relatively uniform. If we were to superimpose the percentages of the 225 excavated graves according to the ages they date back to, with the surface of the cemetery we could see that in certain periods some areas were used more intensively. During the 14th-15th centuries more burials were made in the southern side of the church. During the 16th century we can find 55 percent of the burials on the northern side and during the Principality period the southern side was the one mostly favored. Because, the southern side was predominantly used during the 18th century the medieval cemetery was most damaged on this side. There weren’t any medieval graves preserved in this area, except the ones in the south eastern corner, which were rather close to the cemetery wall. c. Burial traditions The position of the arms may be the print of a local tradition and the exceptions may even indicate newcomers or foreigners. The position of the arms was interprePlate in about 25% of the graves, which was rather random if broken down to each period. Examples in Székely Land so far indicate that basically the arms were placed stretched out along the body in earlier graves, while during the late middle ages it became a wide spread practice to place the arms bent and clutching over the pelvic area.52 In the earliest graves we also found examples of cases, where the arms had been placed alongside the body and cases, where they were clutched together. We observed one case (GR-10), where the hands were placed underneath the pelvis. The small number of examples does not allow us to make any statement or draw any conclusion. However, we can say that during the late Middle Ages, placing the arms alongside the body was the most common while we barely have any examples of arms clutched together and placed over the pelvis. This observation appears somewhat contradictory to the general examples known in Székely Land. Viewed in total, the placing of the arms alongside the body formed the most general image, considering every period and this was visible in 62% of the interpreted cases, hollowing the Reformation, a previously unused arm position appeared in Bogoz, where one arm was bent and placed over the pelvis while the other is stretched out along the body. All of these examples had been encountered in 3% of the total number of graves. This arm position completely disappeared with 52 Benkő 2012, 155.
