The first forty-one years, 1958-19991 1. T - MTA Régészeti Intézet

moment, conferred them on a committee composed of representatives from all archaeological
(museological) institutions, of the Archaeological Committee of the HAS, and the
Archaeological Research Group. There remained two areas, however, where the Research
Group was compelled to accept the role of the coordinator, viz., the works of the
Archaeological Topography of Hungary, and archaeological research outside Hungary. Before
turning to these, however, let us briefly discuss the place of the founders of the Research
Group in contemporary archaeology and the significance of the Group’s initial activities.
The founders were among the most acknowledged Hungarian archaeologists of the
post-war period. Some of them had completed their studies and started their career before
World War II. The medievist László Gerevich (1911-1997), the first Director of the Research
Group, later Archaeological Institute, László Barkóczi (Roman and Late Antique Pannonia),
Ida B. Kutzián (Copper Age), Erzsébet Patek (Bronze Age and Iron Age), and Mihály
Párducz (Iron Age, Scythians, Huns) represented the most significant traditions of Hungarian
pre-war archaeology, namely, the trends developed by the prehistorians Ferenc Tompa and
János Banner, the ancient historian András Alföldi, and the medieval art historian Tibor
Gerevich. László Gerevich graduated under the aegis of his uncle, Tibor Gerevich, and was
deeply influenced by his researches concerning the European, primarily Italian, context for
Hungarian Romanesque art. He started his study of Hungarian Medieval art under the
circumstances created by the Versailles Treaty, i.e., under circumstances where access to the
majority of Hungarian medieval archaeological sites, monuments, and collections was
severely restricted because they were located in the new successor states. He had thus to
realize at an early point in his career the necessity for a change in methodological orientation.
Doubtless also due to the influence of the art historical lessons learned at the spectacular
excavations in the 1930s at medieval centres such as Esztergom and Székesfehérvár, he
argued for an opening towards the knowledge and methods of the history of architecture on
the one hand and, on the other, for systematic archaeological work at the sites of the destroyed
royal/cultural centres of medieval Hungary lying within the actual frontiers of the country. 14
With the excavation of the medieval royal palace under the badly damaged Royal Castle in
Buda between 1946-1962, and with his subsequent researches at the Abbey of
Pilisszentkereszt and the Priory of Dömös between 1967-1981, Gerevich initiated a
monumental working program which aimed at the investigation of the evidence from the
medieval political and cultural centres as part of a wider European context. His working team
14
For the career of Gerevich see his obituary by Ern: Marosi in: Magyar Tudomány 1997 1377-1380.
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