Cemeteries from the 10th and 11th centuries in the vicinity of Röszke. The distribution of boots adorned with mounts in the Carpathian Basin
Varga Sándor
Hadak útján. A népvándorláskor fiatal kutatóinak XXIV. konferenciája. Esztergom, 2014. november 4–6. Conference of young scholars on the Migration Period. November 4–6, 2014, Esztergom
MŐT Kiadványok 3.2 (2017) 465–492
DOI 10.55722/Arpad.Kiad.2017.3.2_21
A tanulmány három, Röszke közigazgatási határából ismert honfoglaló temetőtöredéket ismertet, továbbá részletesen foglalkozik a bemutatott sírok egyikében dokumentált csizmaveretek kapcsán a 10. századi veretes lábbelikkel. A szerző áttekinti a tárgytípus eddigi kutatástörténetét és csoportosítja a csizmavereteket tartalmazó temetkezések lelőhelyeit.
Kulcsszavak: Kárpát-medence, honfoglaláskor, Röszke-Feketeszél, Röszke-Nagyszéksós, Röszke-Ladányi dűlő, veretes lábbeli, csizmaveretek
The paper aims to present the excavations and artifact assemblages of the 10th–11th century sites at Röszke-Feketeszél, Ördögh György földje; Röszke-Nagyszéksós 685; and Röszke-Ladányi dűlő. In rela-tion to the boot mounts found at Ladányi dűlő, the second half of this publication overviews the research history of this artifact type, and provides a catalogue of the archaeological sites that have yielded similar objects. Due to the limited length of the article, a continuation of the current paper (discussing the distri-bution and typological variations of 10th-century boot mounts and presenting the reconstruction of Hun-garian Conquest-period women boot wear, etc.) will be published in another paper.
Understanding the function of mounts and rivets recovered from the feet of the buried was mistakenly attributed to Nándor Fettich. Before Fettich’s publication in 1931, several researchers (e.g. Lajos Bella, Béla Posta, Elek Kada) had already unraveled the actual function of these objects.
I attempted to classify the sites with boot mounts on the basis of previous compilations, aiming also to correct the latters’ errors and inaccuracies. The most important aspects of the catalogue were the location of the artifacts in the graves; the degree of disturbance recorded at the time of the mounts’ documentation in their primary contexts; and the quality of the documentation. The following groups have been identified:
Group 1: Sites of artifacts erroneously classified as boot mounts in previous compilations,
Group 2: Sites where the objects may have been functioned as boot mounts,
Group 3: Sites of boot mounts where the artifacts are unsuitable for proper reconstruction,
Group 4/a: Sites of in situ observed boot mounts where partial reconstruction, based on the documentation, is plausible,
Group 4/b: Sites with graves where boot mounts were observed and documented to a large or full extent.
As a result of the catalogue, 44 graves at 35 sites, classified into Group 3 and Group 4, constitute the basis of further research on mounted boots.
