A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve 2014., Új folyam 1. (Szeged, 2014)

RÉGÉSZET - Kujáni Yvett: Adatok a Maros-Körös közének 4-5. századi temetkezéseihez az apátfalvi temető alapján

Yvett Kujáni

Contributions to the 4-5th Century Funeral Rites in the Area between the Rivers Körös and Maros

Contributions to the 4-5th Century Funeral Rites in the Area between the Rivers Körös and Maros Based on Excavations in the Cemetery of Apátfalva

Yvett Kujáni

With the guiding of Tibor Paluch, the Móra Ferenc Museum of Szeged completed a trial and preventive excavation at the excavation site Nr. 43 connected to the construction of the M43 highway in Apátfalva-Nagyút-dűlő. A part of a settlement from the Árpád Period was found at the eastern side of the area. West of that, a Sarmatian settlement surviving for several archaeological periods and its one (or two) cemetery was found. The total excavation area is 45-50.000 m2.

On the eastern part of the area a Sarmatian cemetery with 47 inhumation graves was discovered. 13 log coffins were found. In Apátfalva considerably fewer graves had been rifled compared to other cemeteries excavated in the Great Hungarian Plain. 40.42% of the graves were rifled and 28 were intact. A few bodies - typically of women or young girls - were buried without a coffin. Six of them were covered with a veil, but in 2 cases it was problematic to decide whether there was a covering veil or not.

Drawing on the burial customs (corpses with South-North orientation, graves surrounded

with a ditch, crockery at the feet of the buried, pearl decoration on female cloths, torques) the community of the settlement must have been of Sarmatian ethnicity. Some objects (e.g. pots with a pouring lip, bone needle-cases) indicate strong eastern connections. Presumably, the cemetery was used for one or two generations. This can be concluded from the fact that the costumes and furniture found in the graves belong to one typological group. On the basis of the findings (the fibulae, the dangles, the torques, a certain type of clasps, the frequent presence of dark cornelian, pots with pouring lip and the burial costumes) the cemetery was used between the middle or last third of the 4th century and the first third of the 5th century. The numerous questions raised by the excavation may lead to new investigations and to the comparison of the excavation with other sites. The comparison of the cemeteries in the area between the Rivers Maros and Kőrös could help us in differentiating the ethnicities living in this territory in the given age.

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