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Coral reefs are the most complex ecosystems within the oceans, having a great variety of species living in connection with them. The author presents Charles Sheppard’s recent book on coral reefs – Coral Reefs: A Very Short Introduction, published by Oxford University Press.
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Sándor Weöres, one of the major 20th century Hungarian poets used the symbolism connected to water and to the sea in several of his works. Living in a country where experiencing the sea was problematic, marine references of Sándor Weöres seem to be allusions to the Western literary heritage on several occasions. The article analyses the contexts of these allusions and the reflections concerning the rare occasions when Sándor Weöres’ had the opportunity to travel on the sea.
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The article discusses the interactions between the sea and human activity based on the different geomorphological aspects of shorelines. Mankind is more and more responsible for the way that oceans and seas look today, but the interaction between the sea and different geomorphological formations results in itself in a great variety of shorelines.
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The author analyses the representations of the sea as a movie character in three major films: Waterworld (1995), The Life of Pi (2012) and Solaris (1972). These can be differentiated among other things by the way they relate to the sea and by the nature of the dialogue between human characters and the water. While in Waterworld the sea is only the scenery for the action, in The Life of Pi a dialogue is created between the human character and the ocean, where alternative answers are offered to the question of the existence and of the nature of God. In Solaris, the sea is presented as an active character, but it serves also as a mirror for the human psyche – this mirroring effect being the common element of the three representations.
More...Az erdélyi kora avar kori soros temetők kutatásának kérdéseiről
One of the most important archaeological phenomena in Transylvania during the Early Avar Period is represented by the late group of the so-called row-grave cemeteries, named conventionally in the archaeological literature “Band-Vereşmort group”. The scientific research of these cemeteries started at the beginning of the 20th century with the excavations carried out at Band by István Kovács. Since then several other necropolises belonging to the same group have been identified and partially unearthed which led to a relatively intense scientific debate regarding mainly to the chronological and ethnical aspects. Based on literary sources as well as on the archaeological evidence, the early scholars (István Kovács, Márton Roska) ascribed the discussed sites to the Gepidic population, while the graves containing horse bones, situated on the edges of the cemetery at Band, were connected to the Avars. Due to the excavations carried out at Moreşti in the 1950s which resulted in the discovery of a cemetery dated in the Gepidic Period, Kurt Horedt succeeded to elaborate the chronology of the Transylvanian row-grave cemeteries. According to him, the graveyards belonging to the Gepidic Period (group III/Moreşti group) can be sharply separated from the ones dated in the Early Avar Period (group IV/Band-Vereşmort group) both from chronological and ethnic point of view. In his opinion the former belonged mainly to the Gepids and could be placed roughly in the first half of the 6th century, while the latter was assigned to “late Germanic” communities, showing also “nomadic” influence, and dated exclusively in the 7th century. He excluded the existence of any direct link between the two horizons. Horedt’s theory was severely criticized by István Bóna who, unlike Horedt, developed his opinion based on the similarities between the two mentioned groups. The polemics between the two scholars dominated the research on the topic in the 1970s and 1980s. In Bóna’s view, the beginnings of the Band-Vereşmort group could be traced back to the second half of the 6th century, or even earlier, and therefore the existence of continuity between the row-grave cemeteries from the Gepidic and the Early Avar Period was out of question. He ascribed the latter group to the Gepidic communities which survived the Avar conquest in 568 and lived continuously in Transylvania under Avar rule. On the other hand, he connected the burials containing horse bones to the Avars. Later this assumption was generally accepted in the Hungarian archaeological literature. Further arguments for the late Gepidic interpretation of the Band-Vereşmort group were brought by Radu Harhoiu who published the cemeteries from Bratei 3 and Galaţii Bistriţei excavated in the 1970s. He dated the whole group in the second half of the 6th century – first half of the 7th century and considered that these cemeteries were used exclusively by the late Gepids living under Avar rule. The burials with horse bones were interpreted as a result of acculturation of the Gepids which adopted Avar burial customs and artefacts. In the course of approximately 100 years which passed since the publication of the cemetery at Band, the scholars focused on two main topics: chronology and ethnicity. Despite of this debate, in the current state of research both of them are far from being clarified. Taking a closer look, one can observe that the date of the collapse of the Gepidic Kingdom (567) and the Avar conquest in the Carpathian Basin (568) are usually considered a sharp borderline between the ‘Gepidic’ and ‘Avar’ material culture, and therefore between the Moreşti group and the Band-Vereşmort group. In the same time the cemeteries from the Tisza region are placed generally before this date, many times not on archaeological, but on historical grounds. However, several finds seem to belong to the first decades of the Avar Age (e.g. Egerlövő, grave 31 – with a coin of Justin II and Sophia; Tiszagyenda – with a coin of Maurice Tiberius; Kisköre-Pap Tanya, graves 42 and 43; Hódmezővásárhely-Kishomok, graves 1 and 7). In Transylvania the situation is less clear and therefore the question if the Moreşti type cemeteries reached the Avar Period or not remains open. The same problem rises in the case of the date of emergence of the Band-Vereşmort group. Recent results showed that the beginning of the group already in the 6th century is beyond doubt, but still, it is not clear enough to which date it can be traced back. There are a few elements which might indicate a date prior to the Avar conquest, like Noşlac, grave 121 or the stray finds coming from the vicinity of cemetery 3 at Bratei, but there is no evidence that these discoveries belonged to the cemeteries in question. The end date of the Band-Vereşmort type cemeteries is also unclear and is hindered by the fact that most of the graveyards were only partially unearthed. In this regard it seems more expedient to analyze the different cemeteries separately. The latest elements were discovered at Noşlac which reach the 8th century. Concerning the ethnic interpretation a relatively great variety can be observed. However, in this regard the research was seriously marked by the nationalistic approach of the communist era. Beginning with the second half of the 1950s the main task of the Romanian archaeology was to identify the local Daco-Roman population during the Migration Period and Early Middle Ages in order to find a link between the moment of the abandonment of the Roman province Dacia and the Medieval Period. This endeavour led to the emphasizing of the importance of the autochthonous population as well as to the minimizing of the significance of the ‘migratory’ peoples. This approach resulted in the emergence of a set of clichés which, in slighter degree, persists even today. One of the most important problems is related to burials containing horse bones which generally belong to the latest phase of the cemeteries. These were traditionally connected to a ‘nomadic’ community (e.g. Avars, Cutrigurs). Recently, Radu Harhoiu assigned them to the acculturated Gepids. In this regard the moment of the appearance of the Avars in Transylvania is of great significance. Since Kurt Horedt it is a commonplace in the Romanian historiography that the Avars entered in Transylvania for the first time only at the middle of the 7th century, or at the earliest, around 630. In contrast, Bóna believed that the first Avars reached the Transylvanian Basin already in the first decades after they settled down in the Carpathian Basin. Unfortunately, our present knowledge on this topic does not permit the establishment of the moment when the Avars entered in Transylvania, first of all, because of the reduced number of the well documented and published excavations. On the other hand, the fact that the research has not succeeded in identifying the specific burial customs and artefact types which could be connected undoubtedly to the first generation of the Avars in the Carpathian Basin was totally left out of consideration. Recent studies pointed out that the typical ‘Avar’ material culture was not brought by the Avars from the East, but emerged in the Carpathian Basin after 568 comprising several elements with different cultural roots (e.g. eastern, Byzantine, Germanic, Romanized, Slavic etc.). As it was shown above, the central question of the debate regarding the Band-Vereşmort group is related to the continuity or discontinuity of the Gepidic population in Transylvania in the last third of the 6th century – first half of the 7th century. It was observed already in the 1970s that the discussed cemeteries contained several grave-goods whose origins cannot be found in the material culture of the Gepidic Period, instead they have convincing analogies in the Late Merovingian necropolises from Western- and, mainly, Central-Europe. Taking this into account, the question which rises is if these elements arrived in Transylvania together with their owners colonized from the West, or they are the results of a development of the local communities which had strong relations with the Merovingian world. All these unsolved problems led to a lot of confusions and contradictions in the archaeological literature. This can be attributed mainly to the inflexible use of the concept of ethnic identity by most of the scholars, who considered it to be a rigid and permanent entity which can be identified based on the grave-goods or, in general, on the material culture. However, the archaeological evidence shows a much more complex picture where different cultural elements are in permanent interaction. In this respect a good example is the cemetery at Gâmbaş which was considered the most representative necropolis of the Avars from Transylvania by Kurt Horedt on one hand, and was thought to be a late Gepidic graveyard by Radu Harhoiu on the other hand. According to the present state of research it seems that the material culture of the Transylvanian Basin during this period included several elements of different origins. Therefore, the question asked in the title of this paper remains unanswered. On the other hand, the future research should focus not only on chronological and ethnical, but also on social aspects. To achieve such results new, well documented excavations as well as anthropological analysis are needed.
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What does it mean state? Why came the state in to existence? Philosophers, scholars gave us many answers from the classical antiquity up to the present. Plato’s asserts that the origin of the state is to be found in that fact that the people cannot suffice for their own needs and each of them lacks many things. Aristotle says: „The state is the highest form of community and aims at the highest good.” By Cicero’s opinion that the state means the common weal. In the recent science the state usually means a population of a defined territory led by independent and institutional supreme power. The further important components of the statehood are the following. Centralization of legitimate enforceable authority (justice and army); specialization of governmental roles; concept of a public power; independence is recognized by other similarly constituted states (soveregnity). Walter Pohl analized the early medieval examples and pointed at that not every early medieval state had a Roman origin. Some of the steppe empires based in the Carpathian Basin provided an alternative to the post-Roman model of government. Pohl counts three Central European steppe empires: the kingdom of the Huns, the Avar Khaganate, and the Hungarian state in the tenth century. My paper was framing the statehood of the Hungarian Great Principality. At first a process can be seen from an oligarchic pre-state to a monarcic state. This happened c. 850 when „seven leading persons” elected Álmos to great prince. This was initiated by no foreign power, only „by the free will and common consent” of the seven leaders to find a new land. A durable possession of a territory is one of the fundamental requirements of statehood. From this aspect the Hungarian Great Principality was an unusual historical phenomenon: at the end of the 9th century it gave up a territory for another. The original place called Etelköz (Etel-küzü ’between the rivers’) or Dentümogyer (Dentumoger) can be located with its rivers Dnieper (?), Bug, Dniester, Pruth and Seret. Etel itself could be a name of a specific river (Volga, Dun or Dnieper). This land was owned by the Hungarians for approximately two generations, then they moved into the Carpathian Basin at the turn of the 9th–10th centuries. This conquest was a well-planned process. Leo VI The Wise Emperor of Byzantium (886–912) described the Hungarians this way. „The Scythian nations are one, so to speak, in their manner of life and their organization; they have a multitude of rulers, and they have done nothing of value, living for the most parts as nomads. Only the nation of the Bulgarians, and also that of the Turks [Hungarians], give thought to a similar military organization, which makes them stronger than the other Scythian nations as they engage in close combat under one commander.” His son Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus Emperor of Byzantium (913–959) gave us the most detailed description of the state-structure. „These eight clans (γενεαί) of the Turks do not obey their own particular princes (αρχοντας), but have a joint agreement to fight together with all earnestness and zeal upon te rivers, wheresoever war breaks out. They have for their first chief (αρχοντα) the prince who comes by sucession of Arpad’s family (γενεας), and two others, the gylas and the carchas, who have the rank of the judge; and each clan has a prince (γενεα αρχοντα). Gylas and karchas are not proper names, but dignities.” Then the Emperor mentioned Termatzous, Árpád’s great-grandson, „who came here recently as a ’friend’ with Boultzous [Bulcsú], third prince and karchas of Turkey (τρίτου αρχοντος και καρχα Τουρχίας). The karchas Boultzous is the son of the karchas Kalis, and Kalis is a proper name, but karchas is a dignity, like gylas, which is superior to karchas.” So three levels of the ranks are mentioned. 1. the great prince of Turkey (μέγας Τουρχίας αρχων)”; 2. two other princes (gylas and karchas); 3. on a lower level eight princes of eight disintegrated clans. Thus the ancient organisation of the leading clans had been shadowed by the rising central power c. 850 when Great Prince Álmos was elected. The frame of the leading clan-system became anachronistic: the Hungarians obeyed the great prince, the gylas and the karchas. This philological result can be strenghtened by further aspects of the diplomacy, military history and the archaeology. The foreign policy of the Hungarian Great Principality was significantly active during the 10th century. It was manifested offensive wars on the one hand and alliances on the other hand. In many cases these two components completed and strenghtened each other. Although the Hungarian archers terrified the Christian Europe, their raids were not simply marauding campaigns but strategically well-organized expeditions, serving Hungarian interests and helping the allies for example King Berengar I of Italy (904–924), Duke Arnulf of Bawaria (913–921). The Hungarian raids showed an important difference from the warfare of the Norsemen and Arabs. As Norsemen were fighting Norsemen or Arabs were fighting Arabs as mercenaries of inimical powers, the Hungarians never turned against each other. This unified concept of the state-warfare proves clearly that there were no independent tribal policy in Hungary. A regularity can be found in the directions of the military expeditions, too. Most of them were led towards West, some of them to South-East, but not towards the northern and eastern neighbourhood of the Carpathians although there were imporant commercial routes. All of these circumstances prove the centralized political will of a strong state. The Hungarian steppe-state ended in 1000 when the last Great Princeps became the first King. He was István I the Saint who ruled Hungary between 997–1038. This radical turn was caused by internal and external circumstances. István belonged to the youngest line of the dynasty which turned to Christianity. Thus he and his father Géza confronted the heathen members of the ruler clan, therefore they need an external alliance. Dynastical connections were made with the German-Roman Empire as István married Gizella. To have German wife from the imperial dynasty was equal with the postulate of the official Christian religion and policy. Koppány – the heathen member of the Hungarian dynasty – wanted to follow the ancient way, but in 997 he was defeated by István and his German warriors. In 1000 István got a royal crown from the Pope Sylvester II (999–1003) with agreement of the German Emperor Otto III (983–1002) so his new kingdom was strenghtened by wide external legitimation. The centralization of the early Hungarian state has been organized twice: 1. integration by Great Prince Álmos c. 850 founding a steppe empire; 2. re-organization the state according the post-Roman system as a Christian Kingdom by King István I The Saint in 1000. Thus the early period of the Hungarian statehood has two phases. Both of the state-foundations were led by one dynasty, because King István the Saint was the fifth descendant of Álmos. From c. 850 up to 1301 (the extinction of the first Hungarian royal family) we have to define this era as the age of Hungarian dynastic state. Although the Hungarian steppe empire ended as István chosed the post-Roman traditions of the statehood and change completely the governmental system and institutions, some ancient steppe-features survived in the Christian Kingdom: high authority of the Hungarian king; instead of feudal disintegration a strongly centralized state-governance.
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Aus dem Karpatenbecken – aus dem ungarischen Siedlungsgebiet des 10. Jahrhunderts – sind bisher nur wenige Schatzfunde bekannt, welche im Laufe des 10. Jahrhunderts verborgen wurden. Bloss im Fund von Máramaros-Huszt waren mehr als 400 Silberdirhem, während die anderen (Gálya, Tokaj, Bodrogszerdahely) nur aus byzantinischen Goldmünzen bestanden. Die Reihe dieser können wir mit einem neuen Fund bereichern. Die Angaben darüber befinden sich zwischen den Akten der Münzsammlung ins Ungarischen Nationalmuseum. Der Kronstadter Numismatiker und Kunstsammler Adolf Resch hat 1911 sechs byzantinische Solidi – zwei aus dem 7. und vier aus dem 10. Jahrhundert – dem Münzkabinett des Ungarischen Nationalmuseums zum Kauf angeboten. Von den sechs Münzen behielt aber das Münzkabinett bloss die zwei Goldmünzen des Constantinus IV., während die anderen zu Resch zurückgesendet wurden. Ihre Bestimmungen nach Sabatier waren in der Akte vermerkt und so können wir sie nach BMC auch bestimmen: 1) Solidus von Romanos I. und Christophoros BMC 35-36 (921-927?), 2) Solidus von Romanos II. und Constantinus VII. BMC 62 (945-959), 3) Solidus von Basileios II. und Constantinus VIII. BMC 5 (976-1025), 4) Solidus des Nikephoros II. Phokas BMC 3 (963-969). Nach Resch’ Mitteilung wurden die Münzen in der Umgebung von Székelyudvarhely (heute Odorheiu Secuiesc, jud. Harghita, Rumänien) gefunden. Im Beitrag wird auch der Goldmünzverkehr des 10. Jahrhunderts im Karpatenbecken untersucht, sowie jene Faktoren, welche die unterschiedliche Intensivität ihres Vorkommens erklären können. Nach den Goldmünzen von Basileios I. und Constantinus VI. (868-879) fehlen die byzantinischen Solidi mehr als vierzig Jahre lang im Karpatenbecken. Sie erscheinen ab den 920-er Jahren wieder und kommen die Solidi von Constantinus VII. und Romanos II. in besonders grösser Zahl vor. Im letzten Drittel des 10. Jahrhunderts sink ihre Zahl und fählt ihr Schwerpunkt in die östliche Hälfte des Karpatenbeckens. Die in der Umgebung von Székelyudvarhely zum Vorschein gekommenen Goldmünzen gehörten höchtstwahrscheinlich zu einem grösseren Fund, welcher in jenen Jahren verborgen werden konnte, als König Stephan nach dem Sieg über seinen Rivalen seine Macht in die östliche Hälfte des Karpatenbeckens ausdehnte.
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The study presents the medieval chapels of Csík-seat (East-Transylvania, Romania). The chapels were important elements in the ecclesiastical organisation and religious life of the Medieval Ages. There are no local historic records about the builders and building circumstances of these chapels, they first appeared in the 17th century and later sources. The later interventions often changed the shape of these buildings and, at the same time, very little research was made regarding their building history. This is the reason why chapels got very slight interest in the historiography. Based on Transylvanian written sources chapels started to spread in the 14th century in this region, while the founders belonged to the upper level of the society. We presume that the same process should happened also in Székely Land even if there are no records about it. Some of the chapels in Csík have archaic plans, dimensions, like the earliest ones, so at least some of them should be dated in the 14th century. In one case this period is definitely confirmed by wall paintings, in other cases only late medieval existence was proved. These are small buildings with polygonal sanctuary without buttresses, and equal nave-sanctuary width. They all are located outside the villages with parish churches, the actually surrounding cemeteries were formed only after the 18th century. The second group of the chapels is situated inside of filia status settlements. Their topographical situation and church-like shape reveals the building motivation and function. They were used for local masses because of the distance from the parish church. As a natural development most of them became independent parish church later in the 18–19th century.
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