Anthropological examination of the chronologically separated groups of the 11th-13th century Zalavár-Chapel (Zalavár-Kápolna) cemetery from Hungary.

The Zalavár-Chapel (Hungarian: Zalavár-Kápolna) cemetery was found near the village Zalavár, located in the western part of the Lake Balaton, in the area of the Little-Balaton (in Hungarian: Kis-Balaton) in Hungary. Burial around the chapel started in the second half of the 11th century and was finished in the 13th century. During this period, significant changes occurred in the burial customs, thus the graves can be divided into four groups (horizons) chronologically. The first horizon includes the earliest, while the third and fourth the latest burials. Earlier, it was assumed that the differences in the burial customs were signs of population changes in that area. However, based on the results of our examination, it was used most probably by the same population throughout the whole time. The craniometric comparison of the skeletons of the Zalavár-Chapel cemetery by Euclidean and Penrose distance analysis with the skeletons of other 114 cemeteries--mainly from the Carpathian-basin--showed that the majority of the population of the studied cemetery originated from the 9th century population of the area.