Biserica evanghelică din Saschiz, judeţul Mureş. Cercetări arheologice (II): cimitirul exterior / The Evangelical church at Saschiz, Mureş County. Archaeological research (II): the cemetery around the church

The study analyses the burials uncovered around the evangelical church in Saschiz, thus supplementing the previously published data about this monument. Archaeological research, carried out at the time of restoration works, has identified several dozen burials, irregularly spread around the church. The necropolis has a low density of burials, the graves are unevenly distributed and their overlaps suggest family burial places. The burial ritual is straightforward – all the deceased have been laid to rest lying on their back, with the forearms set over their body. An interesting feature is that most graves did not respect the traditional head‐ to‐ west orientation, being influenced by the church''s orientation, on the NW– SE axis. None of the graves had grave goods, so the chronological framework has been established based on the date of the church, stratigraphic study and the lack of burials older than the church. According to these features, the burials began at the earliest after the middle of the 15th century and ceased after almost a century. The topo‐ chronological characteristics show that the short‐ lived funerary function of the church was for the benefit of a select number of parishioners, most likely belonging to the forefront families of the community. The archaeological research in Saschiz has thus documented a rather rare situation in the colonists’ environment – one in which the parish graveyard was functioning, around the year 1500, in a different location than the church.