PLACEMENT IN SAHY
July 17th- August 28th 2006
Helen Cartwright
I was very pleased earlier this year to hear that I had been accepted onto the EASE placement in Slovakia. My previous knowledge of Slovakian culture and archaeology was fairly limited, but by reading a selection of travel books and websites about archaeological and historical sites in Slovakia I felt more prepared and more excited about experiencing life and work in Central Europe. From my reading it became apparent quickly that this young nation of Slovakia had a rich heritage of architecture and culture of Hungary for example as well as a more modern influence from Western Europe.
It turned out from looking at maps of Slovakia that Sahy was next to the border with Hungary, and our group flew in to Budapest, les than two hours drive from where we were staying.
We stayed in a house belonging to the host organisation, which was in a small village called Ipelsky Sokolec, about twenty kilometres from the town of Sahy itself. During the week we commuted from Sokolec by minibus to the excavation in Sahy.
For our six week placement, it was planned originally that we would be continuing the long series of excavations at the medieval monastery. It was decided later that we would be working on a Bronze Age site, on the northern edge of Sahy, as the director of excavations would be spending his time working here. The site had recently been discovered by a textile company planning to build a factory. Before we started excavating, much of the archaeological evidence had already been destroyed by the construction work including the remains of some forty Bronze Age houses.
The person in charge of excavating the site, Tibor, is also the director
of the Hont Museum in Sahy,
and has been directing excavations on the monastery for the past ten years.
His knowledge of the
archaeology and history of Sahy and the surrounding Hont region was very useful
for me to get an idea
of the type of site we would be excavating as well as the Bronze Age in southern
Slovakia and
northern Hungary.
During the first week we were given a tour of the town in English which included the old synagogue which now houses art work, as well as the monastery site. We were also given a tour of the Sahy Museum and an introduction to the archaeology of the Hatvan culture.
A short background here may be helpful for understanding something of the Bronze Age in Slovakia. From the evidence of material culture, i.e. pottery, it can be seen that towards the end of the Copper Age there were differences in the cultures of East, Central, and West Slovakia. In East Slovakia, the culture is that seen is the same as that in the Ukraine and Russia. Central Slovakian finds are similar to that of Poland in this period and the Western parts of Slovakia show similarities to sites in the Czech Republic and East Germany.
The area that the Hatvan culture covered was small. Hatvan material has been found around the Ipel River and in West Hungary and East Slovakia. Not many Bronze items have been found, but those that have include Bronze buttons and other small items. Also found are stone forms for making of bronze tools and pottery types. The ceramics of the Hatvan culture share some similarities with the preceding Baden culture including small ceramic animals being found on Hatvan sites, such as the cow some of these were found on the Sahy site.
There are not many Hatvan sites excavated in Slovakia, so the finds recovered from our excavation were particularly important. The main aim of the work was to rescue and document the finds efficiently as time was limited to excavate. It was particularly useful, from the point of view of inexperienced digger; that we were there during the earliest stages of excavation, such as cleaning back the plants and topsoil, and could get an idea of the whole process of excavation as well as initial ideas from the supervisors of what had been uncovered.
The first stages of excavation involved clearing the site and the straightening of the sections around the edge of the site. The area we were excavating was a few hundred metres away from the houses, further up a. On the removal of spoil from the site we came across many pieces of pottery in the redeposited topsoil, these were bagged with the context numbers for the topsoil and taken to the museum in Sahy at the end of each day. Cleaning back the surface of the ground where the topsoil had been removed, trowelling revealed the darker soil of a possible Bronze Age feature was revealed, along with pieces of Bronze Age pottery.
As well as the experience during the week learning and practising new archaeological techniques, we spent time at the weekends travelling around Slovakia and Hungary, to visit places of cultural and historical interest. The first cultural trip was to the town of Ezstergom on the Danube in northern Hungary. The town is on the border with Hungary and is split in two parts, one on the Hungarian side and across the border, the Slovak town. On top of the hill in the centre of the Hungarian town sits the famous basilica. The building dates from the mid nineteenth century and is built on the site where the saint Adalbert church was founded by Saint Stephen around 1000 AD. When one thinks of Ezstergom, this building is the image that springs to mind, it dominates the surrounding town and the architecture inside and out is visually impressive, with vast arches and a seventy foot dome, it includes an altarpiece of Michelangelo Grigoletti. The interior of the dome is ornate and beautiful, as are the ceilings of the nave. I was fortunate on the day of the visit to see the procession of Hungarian wedding couple and guests up the nave to the top of the church for their marriage ceremony. It is also possible to climb up to the dome and see the views of the surrounding town and country.
There were many market and craft stalls near the cathedral selling typical Hungarian souvenirs and postcards of the town. In comparison to nearby Sahy the town appeared to be a tourist hotspot and in the past had been an important Hungarian centre.
Following the time on castle hill, we went into the lower parts of the town and visited the Christian Museum of Art. The museum was opened in 1875 and was the first public museum outside of Budapest, it houses both Hungarian and European works of art from the twelfth to the nineteenth century. There are a large number of Roman Catholics in Slovakia and Hungary, and a feature of many towns including Sahy and Ezstergom is a stone representation of Calvary on the tallest hill in the town as well as models of the stations of Christ.
During the summer months in the town in Ezstergom there is a craft market in the town stretching alongside the Danube river, which sells a range of items including traditional Hungarian clothing, bows and arrows, leather goods, jewellery, toys, and food. There was also a stage with live piano and vocal music and folk dancing at the end of the market.
Back in Sahy in the second week on the digging site, the work continued with straightening newly dug sections cleaning away the horizontal surfaces to reveal more of the buried Hatvan features. Pottery sherds continued to be found in relatively large quantities, both plain and decorated pottery as well the aforementioned ceramic cows. Tiny pieces of flint were discovered and a new feature in the corner of the trench. In addition to the Bronze Age pottery, there were also modern sherds of pottery in the redeposited topsoil which still covered some of the areas of the site. These modern sherds are difficult to date as the same type of pottery was used in the Hont region for several centuries.
New features, recognised by different soil colours were now emerging in the north end of the trench as well as the eastern side where a large mound of spoil had been moved. More of the topsoil from the previous digging of the site by machinery had been removed and the finds were taken to the museum in Sahy, where they were cleaned and processed, to be sent later to the department of archaeology at Nitra University.
The next cultural visit was to the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava. This
was the most well known place in Slovakia from the point of view of British
tourists; popular for its cheap prices on stag and hen weekends, and indeed,
the first place we had visited in a fortnight where we saw other British people
on holiday. After travelling up from Sahy on the Friday and checking into
the hotel, we went out into the old town tourist area. I was immediately aware
of the contrast between the beautiful old buildings in the old town and the
high rise tower blocks and concrete that we had been driving through to arrive
in the centre of Bratislava. The squares within the centre of town had beautiful
stone fountains and other architecture; the fountains were present in front
of important buildings such as the opera house, and the beautiful Roland's
fountain in the main square. In many towns of Slovakia that we visited during
the placement, the fountain was a common feature. The Friday night was particularly
busy on the streets of Bratislava as there many bars in the centre of town
as well as live street music both traditional string music and modern dance.
Having a full day in the city on Saturday, the day was spent in the old part
of the town, in the morning we went to the castle. The hrad site had been
occupied from the Stone Age, through Celtic and Roman times, as indicated
by the archaeological finds from the site, of which some are now on display
inside the castle museum. During our visit the castle also held a temporary
Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition, which included some of his sketches and constructions
of his inventions. Another level of the museum had a permanent collection
of Gothic Christian art.
We also visited the Natural History Museum, another part of Slovak National Museum, which in addition to its permanent collections had a temporary mammoth exhibition. The museum is home to a mammoth skeleton found in nearby Senec, the permanent housed on the upper floors include 'The Prehistory of Life', and there are also exhibitions of Slovakian fauna, flora and insects.
During the third week of excavation, we continued to excavate the features that were buried below the redeposited topsoil. The shape of the features indicated that there was an occupation spread and a pit with lots of Bronze Age pottery sherds coming out from it as well as some pieces of bone.
In the same area along the north side of the site there were more areas of sand and clay soil that were cleaned by trowel. It was during this week that we were shown how to lay a series of grid squares. The corners of the squares were then marked with nails; the plans of the features could then be drawn to their actual locations on the site. The process involved using Pythagoras' a2 + b2 = c2 formula to calculate the diagonal distance between nails.
During the next weekend we drove to Banska Stiavnica, an old Slovakian gold and silver mining town to the north of Sahy. There was a small museum of art and several tourist shops as well as monuments of the old communist regime. The town earned its wealth in medieval times from silver deposits and similarly to other towns the central old area is very beautiful, the outer streets contrasting with large brightly coloured tower blocks. The new castle (novy zamok) at the top of the hill holds a collection of weaponry and related artefacts and information about the medieval Turkish invasion of the area, as well as maps of areas that were under Turkish control in this period. The castle was built to prevent attack and there is an excellent view of the town from the top of the tower.
The weather in Sahy was cooler for the beginning of the fourth week and during one rainy day we spent time in the museum to draw some of the finds that had been excavated from the site and write about their appearance and function, this work would be repeated by experts at the University of Nitra. The abundance of pottery sherds was striking and it was interesting to see them and their decoration and colour after they had been cleaned.
Our next trip took us into the Tatra Mountains of central and northern Slovakia. On our way to the High Tatras, we stopped at Banska Bystrica another mining town like Banska Stiavnica, but larger, the capital of seven mining towns in Slovakia during the Middle Ages.
Today Banska Bystrica is better known amongst Slovaks for being the centre of the Slovak National Uprising in 1994. There is a SNP Museum with a collection of tanks and guns and an exhibition about the deportation to concentration camps of Jewish Slovakians in the Second World War. The main street in the town was very wide and when at the long Main Square, one could see the tall black Russian communist monument made from black obelisk stone contrasting with the paler cream architecture of the houses and tower behind. The fountain in the centre of the square was also striking and this is reflected as it is named the 'brutal' fountain in one of the guidebooks. From the clock tower at the end of the main square, there is a good view of the surrounding town and the hills of the low Tatras. The main art gallery at the edge of the main square has changing exhibitions of twentieth century Slovak artists.
In the late afternoon, the weather had turned cooler and continued to do so as we approached the high Tatras, on the way to Poprad.
We stayed in a small village called in the high Tatras, on the Sunday we visited the nearby Ice Caves. There are waterfalls, stalactites and huge volumes of ice and an ice floor, the temperature inside was chilly but surprisingly refreshing after a walk up the hill to reach the caves. There were many tourists at the caves from Germany, Hungary, America and Britain.
On Monday we went to an alpine lake in the high Tatras, and took the ski lift up to the top of the tallest mountain. The beauty of the Tatras has clearly come to attract tourists from all around the world and the price of souvenirs and food was much higher, quite a contrast to Sahy and the southern part of Slovakia. Many of the towns also resembled western European ski resorts.
On the return to Sahy we drove east first to Kosice, the second largest town in Slovakia with a population over 250,000, about half that of Bratislava. Kosice, like Sahy is close to the border with Hungary. There is a long, pedestrianised main square called Hlavna ulica, which is filled with shops and tram and cycle lanes, as well as Europe's easternmost gothic cathedral. There is a tiny water channel running the length of the square topped by a musical fountain in the middle of the square with lights and music.
On the following Tuesday, our supervisors decided to open two trenches one at north of site and one perpendicular to a modern gas pipe trench in order to expose the natural underlying soil below some Hatvan features before time ran out.
The smaller trench took a few days to excavate and turned out to be approximately a foot deep. The excavation of the gas pipe trench took a few more days using mattocks and trowels, and the cleaned sections cut through some of the different context layers to the natural soil, the pipe itself was over a metre deep from the level of the site, but the material around the pipe was removed in order to get a section through the lowest of the features.
For our final weekend in Slovakia, we visited the town of Kremnica along with some of the young people of Sahy and Levice. Prior to this trip the mayor of Sahy had arranged a barbecue for us with some of the young people who live around Sahy, so that they could practice English conversation. He also organised this trip to Kremnica, famous in history for gold mining and minting coins and medals. Kremnica's castle at the centre of the town is protected by thick walls and bastions; and there are many gates around the edge of the walls. The castle was once the equivalent of the Bank of Hungary in the Middle Ages and one of the most important towns of Central Europe in this period. Today there is a museum dedicated to the history of coinage and medals making in Slovakia with examples from the coins of the Bronze Age to the modern bank notes of the Slovak Republic.
We were given a guided tour of the town by an English speaking museum worker who took us to the main town hall, the church and tower as well as the minting museum and mining museum section. The mining museum also had an underground reconstruction of the mines below Kremnica, to see the varying machines that had been used for mining metals there in the past.
During the final week of digging the site, we were pleased to learn from Hatvan experts, who visited the site, that the work we had been doing would be continued before the area was built on by the textile company. The plans and sections of each feature were finished as well as being photographed by our supervisor. It is thought that the site may have been the industrial manufacturing area for the Bronze Age houses found nearby, from the finds of ceramic and bronze as well as the amount of finds. The site was of great interest to the Slovakian archaeologists and during our six weeks I learnt a great deal about the practices of archaeology in Slovakia and how it differs from British Archaeology in terms of the type of material found as well as the approach of the people in charge. I think that it will be particularly useful for any future archaeological work that I do in any country, to have a way of comparing the approaches that are used commonly in the UK, where the budget for archaeological work and equipment though small, is significantly greater than that in Slovakia for the most part.
At the end of six weeks in Sahy, we set off for our final visit to the Hungarian
capital city of Budapest. Buda and Pest are two separate areas on each side
of the Duna (Danube) river. On the first afternoon we found our hostel on
Buda, and then travelled on the tram and metro over the river into Pest, stopping
first to walk around the lake and to visit the Heroes square. In the centre
there is a monument incorporating a tall column with the guardian Angel Gabriel,
in the centre of two half colonnades with statues of past Hungarian Kings
and independent leaders of history. Also nearby was the Vajdahunyad Castle,
which had beautiful stone carvings as well as a large gift shop selling high
quality souvenirs and guidebooks.
From there we walked along Andrassy Road, a central straight road which begins from the Heroes Square. The road is home to the Opera House, and on the day we visited it was full of carnival floats for a dance music festival and hundreds of people drinking and dancing and rollerblading on the streets and up to the square. On Andrassy Road, our first stop was to visit the House of Terror museum, 60 Andrassy Road. The building is infamous now as during the mid part of the twentieth century, it was the headquarters for the political police of the arrow cross of the 1930's and 40's and subsequently the communist regime leaders. The lower levels held political prisoners /traitors of both regimes who were tortured in the basement of the building.
The building is intended to and does appears sinister from the inside and out, it is dark and tall, with bold white type across the top "TERROR" and the two symbols of the arrow cross and the communist star. The initial impression one gets when seeing the museum is one of fear and foreboding and is in stark contrast to the other buildings on the pretty bright street, inside the centre of the museum houses a large communist tank and hundreds of photos up the walls three storeys high of victims of the arrow cross and communism in Hungary. It serves as a stark reminder of the atrocities that went on here and elsewhere in Hungary around the mid twentieth century.
On the second day we returned to Pest and walked along another long straight road called Ulloi Ut past the beautiful green and gold roofed museum of industrial arts, the architecture is here is a brilliant example of the Hungarian art nouveau of the late nineteenth century. Nearby was the impressive National Museum of Hungary, which was also built in the nineteenth century, the appearance is reminiscent of Greek architecture of Athens with the front columns and high steps. The museum is home to collections from many different periods of Hungarian history and archaeology up to modern times. It was then time to return to the airport in Budapest and fly back to the UK.
Looking back at my experiences in Slovakia and Hungary I realise that I have learnt a great deal not only about excavation techniques and practice in Slovakia but also about the history and culture of Slovakia and Hungary. My previous experience of excavation was limited to a month on two British sites, and after six weeks of excavation I feel more confident in the skills already knew as well as new ones I learnt on my placement. I was impressed by the kindness of our Slovakian hosts and the friendliness of people that we met during on our travels during the placement. Working with people that I had not met before and living with them has been very helpful in building my confidence at talking to people and I have made some really good friends. I will definitely be returning to see more of Slovakia and Hungary in the future.