Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 88. (Budapest 1996)

Fóthi, E. ; Fóthi, Á.: Palaeodemographic estimation of the Hungarian Conquest Period cemetery of Tiszafüred

region called Etelköz. In 895 they moved under the leadership of prince ÁRPÁD into their present homeland in the Carpathian Basin. Here we must remark that quite a number of arguments point out this event as the last in a chain when several waves invaded the Carpathian Basin in about 300 years. This theory is in the heart of the double-conquest concept of GY. LÁSZLÓ. The Hungarians started a large number of long-range mounted raids, a number of them of campaign size, against southern and western countries up to 955. This way they became notorious with our neighbours to the present day. The last pagan Hungarian prince GÉZA recognised the acceptance of western Christianity as the only chance of integrating Hungarians in medieval Europe. King SAINT STEPHEN I set Hungary once and for all on this course when he militantly supported the fast spread of Christianity and European culture. He also started to form a feudal state structure (BENDA 1986). MATERIAL AND METHOD The cemetery of Tiszafüred-Nagykendcrföldek is located in Northern Hungary in the upper Tisza region. There the soil is extremely light, sandy. This fact has its advantages as this sort of soil preserved bones very well. Therefore most of the finds were in better than usual condition. However, it was also the reason of some misfortune. Only three fourth of the cemetery could be analysed because some of it were utilised as a sand-pit. The cemetery was uncovered by ISTVÁN FODOR. The remains of 113 individuals were found in graves forming lines. The grave-goods were Fig. 1. Route of the Hungarians from the Urals to the Carpathian Basin