Komoly kihívás a szegedi antropológia számára: a mohácsi terepantropológiai projekt
Authors: PÁLFI György 
Published: January 2023

The 500th anniversary of the tragic 1526 Mohács battle is quickly approaching. The Duna-Dráva National Park, the manager of the Memorial Park of Mohács, has initiated a series of research and development to commemorate the battle anniversary, among others the excavation of some of the Memorial Park’s mass graves, the individual identification of the mixed human remains, the scientific examination of the skeletons and the individuals’ reburial with belated respect. In 2020, the year our Szeged Department celebrated the 80th birthday of its foundation, the Szeged anthropology team was asked to carry out the field anthropology work and contribute to the different biological anthropological studies of the remains.

We accepted the Pécs Janus Pannonius Museum’s honourable request, and three researchers from the Szeged anthropology team worked in weakly rotation in Mass Grave No 3, throughout the entire 2020 autumn period. Neither such a big mass grave, nor human skeletal remains mixed to their fullest extent have ever been excavated in Hungary before this special archaeological/anthropological operation – consequently, nobody could estimate the duration of the excavation. As it was not possible to finish the work in 2020, special winter isolation and ventilation system were applied to protect the skeletal material from cold and humidity. A second excavation campaign was realized in 2021 summer-autumn, doubling the number of the Szeged anthropologists compared to the previous year. Due to this massive contribution, we have accomplished about 75–80% of the work. The total excavation of this mass grave will be completed at a third campaign in 2022.

Although the field anthropological work is still in progress and an important part of the skeletal material is only partially excavated, some preliminary observations are to be made. In Mass Grave No 3, the estimated number of the skeletons is about 300 (more than 200 skeletons have already been taken out of the pit). That is to say, the first superficial examination in 1976 underestimated the number of the skeletons (about 130). This underestimation is also due to the skeletons’ extreme compression, especially in the lower layers of the mass grave. A special fence-like phenomenon could be observed at the borders of the human skeletal mass, in connection with some specific decomposition phenomena (insufficiency of the grave volume with regard to the human body mass, decomposition under pressure, etc.).

The skeletal material is in a medium or fragmentary state of preservation, due to the thinness of the covering soil, agricultural activity, decomposition effects and serious damages during the construction of the Memorial Park in 1975. Despite the outlined preservation problems and mixed positions of the different skeletal elements, with the help of permanently registered digital photo data and a special 3D software and thanks to a permanent and synergic archaeologist-anthropologist collaboration, we managed to identify the individuals and excavate them individually. This identification work is strongly complicated by the secondary effects of the inhumation methods: the skeletal material is primarily mixed because the corpses were randomly dropped into the pit, impiously and without any respect.

According to the archaeological artefacts found in 1960, 1976 and in our days, in this mass grave we could find the skeletons of Hungarian soldiers serving in the Army of the Hungarian Kingdom, as well as Czechs, Croatians, Poles and Germans, that is the Christian Coalition Army, which tried to stop the Ottoman Army led by Suleiman the Magnificent on the August 29, 1526. According to the preliminary field anthropology observations, skeletal remains of predominantly young males were to be found (between 20 and 40 years), as well as a relatively high amount of juvenile (between the ages of 16 and 20) male skeletons indicating military activity started relatively early. Finally, some skeletons belonging to women and children (between the ages of 12 and 14) should also be mentioned.

The most remarkable osteoarchaeological observation is the abundance of peri mortem cut wounds observed first of all on skull bones and cervical vertebrae. We could identify some cut limbs, especially arms, but the highly dominant areas of the cut marks are the head and neck. Some of these wounds can be associated with combat situations in battles. During the 1960 and 1976 studies (based only on superficial observations, and leaving the bones intact), some wounds were considered probable injuries of people working in the Hungarian camps destroyed by the Turkish cavalry. However, as in 2020 and 2021 we could really excavate the skeletons, we were able to touch and directly examine the bones, we observed a series of cut marks which are completely incompatible with combat situations (either at the battlefield or at the camps). These wounds (observable frequently on the mandibulae, cervical vertebrae, occipital or temporal bones) indicate that the cervical spine received several cuts, from behind and from above, and these cuts hacked across the cervical spinal cord several times (frequently in a quasi-parallel way). These wounds indicate executions by a saber or a sword as well as the kneeling position of the victims. These observations are compatible with a third theory and suggest that the 5 mass graves of the Memorial Park may reflect to a very sad event: the mass execution date of August 31, 1526 when Suleiman ordered the execution of about 2000 prisoners (primarily soldiers, but probably some children and female prisoners too from the camps). Our main hypothesis is that we may have found the bones of these martyrs.

The preliminary anthropological observations and the archaeological data are all compatible with the mass execution hypothesis. However, the excavation is not finished yet – it should be completed, the skeletal identification has to be completed, too and a very accurate palaeopathological and forensic anthropological study (including systematic microCT analysis of the wounds) is to be carried out in order to validate or deny our preliminary hypothesis.