Warrior or Not? Data to the evaluation of the Hungarian Conquest-period armed graves

Tihanyi Balázs – Pálfi György

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) 557–595

DOI 10.55722/Arpad.Kiad.2017.3.2_26

A tanulmány a 10. századi magyarság Kárpát-medencében található fegyveres sírjaival foglalkozik. A sírleletekből klasszikus régészeti vizsgálattal kinyerhető információk mennyisége korlátozott, de az antropológiai módszerek bevonása új lehetőségeket vet fel. A vizsgálatok alapját a paleopatológiai elváltozások bizonyos csoportja, a fizikai munkavégzés hatására kialakuló, úgynevezett aktivitás okozta csontelváltozások adják. A szerzők az elméleti alapok és az íjászat anatómiájának áttekintése után Sárrétudvari-Hízóföld temetőjének fegyveres és nem fegyveres férfi sírjait vizsgálják és értékelik a régészeti leletek és az aktivitás okozta csonttani elváltozások segítségével.

Kulcsszavak: Kárpát-medence, honfoglaláskor, fegyveres sírok, íjászat anatómiája, enthesopathiák

According to historical and archaeological sources, the warriors were a significant part of the 10th cen-tury Hungarian society. The precise evaluation of the link between the graves and the weapon findings is a cardinal question for the cemetery analysis. Archaeologists drew conclusions from the number and rate of the armed and unarmed graves, but this can lead the investigation astray. The problem is that we cannot draw conclusions about the activity of the individuals during their life only from the presence or absence of weapons in the grave. The grave findings may indeed reflect rather the wealth or cultural behaviours of the family and the population who laid the dead to rest. The lack of weapons, especially, does not mean that the individual did not belong to the group of warriors during his life.

Both historical and archaeological sources confirm the dominant role of mounted archery in the 10th century Hungarian army. Practising archery leads to a repetitive physical stress that affects the body and the attachment sites of muscles and ligaments usually involved in the movement. Activity-induced skeletal changes may develop as a response to the systematic heavy load and can be investigated with anthropological methods. Knowing archery anatomy and the paleopathological literature on the topic, we started to investigate the 10th century cemetery of Sárrétudvari-Hízóföld (Hungary, Hajdú-Bihar County).

We analysed the 58 armed graves of individuals, from children to elderly, as well as the 40 unarmed adult males of the series. We macroscopically checked the upper limbs – scapulae, claviculae, humeri, radii and ulnae – to record the activity-related changes, with a special focus on the so-called mechani-cal enthesopathies.

The anthropological and archaeological investigations corroborate each other. We noticed, in the armed group, in particular, entheseal changes at a very high rate at the attachment sites of the muscles usually involved in the shooting process, such as the m. pectoralis major, m. latissimus dorsi, m. del-toideus, and m. brachialis (presence over 90%). On the other hand, the anthropological data extend our knowledge as the entheseal changes that were observed in the armed group were also encountered in some of the unarmed individuals. This suggests that there were more archers in the cemetery, without any sign of weapons in the grave.