The Archaeological Setting

The extensive deposition of wind-blown loess during the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene, combined with the successive movement of several active streambeds across the Plain’s soft loess surface, left behind a surface landscape largely devoid of the raw materials that prehistoric people were so fond of using, thus transforming the Plain into a virtual laboratory for prehistoric archaeologists. Since the prehistoric inhabitants were forced to look elsewhere for metal and stone, which occur in abundance in the surrounding mountainous areas, the presence of materials such as obsidian, chert, copper, and gold in different archaeological contexts provides the prehistorian with the ability to identify patterns of exchange in a manner unparalleled in most other parts of the world.
While these various geological events have created a region that in many other respects offers benefits that can be found in only a few other parts of the world, these same geomorphological processes have obscured much of the early prehistory of the Plain, leaving a picture of the past that fades to black sometime during the Mesolithic.

Upper Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic, and Mesolithic

Although some Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic sites had been identified on the Plain during the early decades of this century (e.g., Szeged-Öthalom, Hugyaj/Érpatak, Tószeg-Áldozó, see Banner 1936; Hillebrand 1925; Sümeghy 1944), the cultural makeup of the region prior to the Neolithic remained largely unknown. As a result, reconstructions of these earlier periods were therefore subject to much speculation (for a recent discussion, see Makkay 1996). In recent years, however, new evidence regarding the later Pleistocene and early Holocene habitation of the Plain is beginning to emerge, thus clarifying the relationship between the early Neolithic agriculturalists and their hunting and gathering predecessors.

Of particular interest in this regard is the work of Kertész (1996), who has identified several Upper Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic, and Mesolithic sites in the northwestern corner of the Plain, in the Jászság area. Kertész notes that Upper Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic sites in the Jászság tend to be located on Pleistocene alluvial fans. In contrast, Upper Paleolithic sites in the center of the Plain tend to be covered with thick Quaternary deposits. For example, Kertész (1996:12) notes that the cultural layer at the Szeged-Öthalom campsite was found at a depth of 4.5 m, while at Madaras-Téglaveto‡ it was between 6.5 and 7 m deep. The depth of deposits on top of these early sites precludes their systematic investigation at the center of the Plain. Mesolithic sites, on the other hand, are located in a wider variety of geological contexts in the Jászság, and can therefore be expected in different contexts throughout the Plain. These range from marginal subsidences and alluvial fans in the northern Alföld to the sandy plain between the Danube and the Tisza (Kertész 1996:16-17).

Interestingly, despite the relatively high density of Mesolithic sites, Kertész did not discover any Early Neolithic (Körös Culture) sites in the Jászság. The closest Early Neolithic sites are located in the Middle Tisza valley. This led Kertész to suggest that differences in site location are likely the result of, on the one hand, geological, hydrological, and climatic considerations; and, on the other, the differing ecological demands of hunters and gatherers (i.e., Mesolithic populations) as opposed to farmers (i.e., Early Neolithic populations):

The Mesolithic sites in the Alföld lie on the well-watered alluvial plain (the Jászság area) and in sand regions on the dune ridges associated with marginal floodplains and water-courses (the sandy plain between the Danube and the Tisza as well as the Nyírség area). In other words, the Mesolithic sites lie in ecological niches which were rejected by the Körös culture. The Körös culture preferred levees suitable for agriculture. This is the main reason why Mesolithic and Early Neolithic Körös groups lived side by side for a long period of time in the Alföld (Kertész 1996:25).

Early and Middle Neolithic

The Early Neolithic Körös Culture

As is the case with the Early Neolithic throughout all of Europe, the process of “Neolithization” within the region has received much attention. Two questions have dominated research into the Hungarian Early Neolithic. The first concerns how the region came to be occupied by ceramic- and food-producing groups. The second addresses how those ostensibly invasive groups related to indigenous Mesolithic hunting and gathering populations. Until the recent work of Kertész (see above) in the Jászság area the relationship of the Early Neolithic agriculturalists to their Mesolithic predecessors, and contemporaries, has remained the subject of speculation.

In a recent discussion of the topic, Makkay (1996:35) noted:

Traditionally, research of the Körös-Starcûevo-Cris, (KS or KSC if the Transylvanian distribution of the culture is also involved) has been mainly concerned with regional chronologies, typological nuances, and the refinement of the internal chronology of the culture complex. Considerably less effort has been devoted to a better understanding of the Körös distribution, or the research of its settlement patterns and even less to the explanation of large-scale patterns of historical development.

… that the northern expansion of the Körös culture in the Tisza valley was blocked not by geographic factors, but rather by an ancestral (and, possibly, linguistic) border which in the Neolithic did not coincide with any major natural geographic boundary, but which might easily have coincided with an earlier, Mesolithic, or even Pleistocene geographic boundary or area and, also, with a corresponding cultural boundary which must already have existed in the Mesolithic. (Makkay 1996:41)

… the Körös culture did not penetrate further north partly because it was repelled by the heavy, water-logged clay of the low wet backswamps and partly because the area was inhabited by a Late Mesolithic indigenous population. Which for some reason or other, resisted Neolithization in spite of the fact that for some time it lived beside the northern border of the Körös culture. And when this Mesolithic population finally accepted the Neolithic way of life, it did so on its own terms. By this time, however, the decisive element was not the geographic boundary and environment, but rather the different ethnic background. (Makkay 1996:41).

The Middle Neolithic Alföld Linear Pottery Culture (AVK)

The AVK apparently developed in situ within the Great Hungarian Plain, directly out of its Early Neolithic (Körös and Szatmár) predecessors (Kalicz and Makkay 1977; Makkay 1982), sometime during the middle of the sixth millennium BC. Roughly contemporary with the transition from Starcûevo to Vincûa further south in Yugoslavia, the transition from Körös to AVK in the Plain is also characterized by ceramic changes. In the Great Hungarian Plain, this period is marked by the appearance of incised, linear decoration on open-shaped vessels. While AVK pottery is typically decorated with white paint, the early Vincûa pottery is typically dark and burnished. Roughly simultaneous with this development in the eastern Carpathian Basin, the LBK appears in Transdanubia (for a recent synthesis of the Neolithic in Transdanubia, see Kalicz 1998). Makkay (1982:42-43) suggests that the AVK developed out of the Szatmár II group in eastern Hungary, and the LBK from the Bicske Group.

Kosse (1979) noted that AVK sites occupy a much wider range of environments than sites of the preceding Körös Culture, penetrating into forest zones hitherto unoccupied during the Neolithic. Correlated with this shift in settlement expansion, Kosse (1979:150-151) recorded a shift towards the more intensive exploitation of locally available domesticated animals and cultivars:

In the Linear Pottery culture, the wheat-sheep-aquatic/wild resource economic pattern of the Körös culture underwent several changes, the best documented of which is the shift to locally available domesticated animals. Cattle replaced sheep as the most important species, and pigs, which had been almost negligible at the Körös sites, became equally or more important than sheep. Aurochs and wild swine are both indigenous to much of temperate Europe, and the increase in the number of their domesticated counterparts at the Linear Pottery sites was without doubt the result of local domestication (Kosse 1979:150-51).

Towards the end of the Middle Neolithic, about 5,100 BC, the previously homogeneous AVK cultural assemblage gave way to more spatially-discrete ceramic groupings within the Great Hungarian Plain (Bognár-Kutzián 1966; Kalicz and Makkay 1977). As Sherratt (1997b:280) noted:

On the lower and middle Tisza and along the Körös, the Szakálhát group is distinguished by pottery ornamented with paint outlined by incised decoration. To the north of this the Esztár group occupied a wide territory on the Nyírség, Szamos and upper Berettyó, in which pottery with dark painted ornament was used. Various smaller groups emerged on the fringes of the northern mountains: Szilmeg in the Bükk foothills, Tiszadob in the Sajó valley, and Bükk in the mountains themselves, with exceptionally fine incised and occasionally painted pottery. All of these groups are distinguished by their characteristic finewares, which occur in smaller quantities as imports in each others’ areas.

The Late Neolithic Tisza-Herpály-Csöszhalom Complex

In their recent synthesis of Late Neolithic research on the Plain, Kalicz and Raczky (1987a) traced the concept of a younger, final, phase of the Neolithic to Tompa’s (1929) influential article:

[Tompa] assigned the Lengyel culture of Transdanubia to the younger, second phase of the Tisza culture, and traced its development to the Transdanubian expansion of the Tisza population. In fact, Tompa had correctly identified the culture complexes that are even today regarded as the main representatives of the Late Neolithic in Hungary (Kalicz and Raczky 1987a:11).

The Early Copper Age Tiszapolgár Culture

Compared to the three relatively distinct ceramic groups that characterized the Great Hungarian Plain during the end of the Neolithic, Early Copper Age Tiszapolgár pottery is remarkably homogeneous across the entire Plain. Characterized by unpainted and usually polished surfaces, Tiszapolgár vessels frequently are decorated with knobs (also called bosses) and lugs that are sometimes pierced, or semi-pierced. In her initial typological analysis of the pottery from Basatanya, Bognár-Kutzián (1963:236-99) identified thirteen different vessel types, ranging from small tumblers (type A) to large storage jars (type D) and cooking pots (type G). Each of these types (A-M), was then sub-divided into variants (e.g., C3) and subvariants (e.g., C3c), each of which referred to only a handful of specific vessels (see Bognár-Kutzian 1963:figures 1-10). The most diagnostic vessel types of the Early Copper Age have hollow-pedastalled bases, which are frequently pierced (Bognár-Kutzián’s types H, I and J), and often quite large. In a subsequent synthetic publication, Bognár-Kutzián (1972) added an additional three types to the thirteen she identified at Basatanya (types N,O, and P), creating an explicit, if cumbersome method of classification.

The area occupied by the Tiszapolgár culture extended from the Banat in northern Yugoslavia, across the entire Hungarian Plain, into the foothills of Transylvania, and into the mountains of southern Slovakia (see Figure 5). This area corresponded roughly to the area that previously had been occupied by the Tisza-Herpály-Cso‡szhalom groups during the Late Neolithic, but extended to slightly higher elevations in the east and north. Bognár-Kutzián (1963, 1972) envisioned the Tiszapolgár culture as a direct cultural extension of these preceding Late Neolithic groups, as do most other researchers working in the region.

The Middle Copper Age Bodrogkeresztúr Culture

The geographic extent of Bodrogkeresztúr generally continues that of the Tiszapolgár, but for the first time some sites are located on the sandy interfluvial zone between the Danube and the Tisza (see Figure 6). In addition, the area between the Jászág and the Danube bend, which previously had been occupied by Lengyel sites, became incorporated into the Bodrogkeresztúr sphere (see Banffy 1994:294). Sherratt (1997c) suggests that the center of the Plain became depopulated during this time, as settlements became more concentrated on the edge of the Plain.

Similar to the preceding period, the vast majority of information for the period is known from the excavation of large cemeteries, in particular Tiszapolgár-Basatanya (Bognár-Kutzián 1963) and Tiszavalk-Kenderföld (Patay 1978a,b). The separation of settlement from cemetery, already established during the Early Copper Age, continued. In addition to the grave goods commonly associated with Tiszapolgár burials, copper axes begin to be found in increasing regularity in burials and also as stray finds (see Sherratt 1997b:294).

It generally is assumed that Bodrogkeresztúr populations continued the subsistence practices of their Tiszapolgár predecessors. Settlements during the Middle Copper Age are similar to those of the preceding period – they tend to be small, and dispersed. One anomalous settlement, Szarvas 38 (Makkay 1983), contains a large roundel reminiscent of Lengyel sites and may be indicative of increasing contact between the Great Hungarian Plain and Transdanubia (i.e., the Balaton-Lasinja culture) during this time. Increasing contact throughout the Carpathian Basin is also indicated by the presence of sites in the previously uninhabited frontier zone between the Danube and the Tisza.

The Late Copper Age Boleráz–Baden, Pécel, and Kurgan Cultures

Several of the cultural practices that had begun during the Early and Middle Copper Age persist throughout the later Copper Age, including the tradition of placing the dead into large, formal cemeteries, such as Alsónémedi (cf. Korek 1951; Némeskeri 1951; Bökönyi 1951).

While certain cultural features suggest a high degree of continuity with the previous period, others suggest that several of those features that had been adopted at the beginning of the Copper Age began to assume a different social role during the later Copper Age. For example, cattle, which had begun to dominate faunal assemblages during Tiszapolgár times, occur in several Baden burials throughout the Plain (see Whittle 1996:122-126), suggesting an increased emphasis in their role probably as producers of ‘secondary products’ (see Sherratt 1983a).

Another feature that characterizes the later Copper Age is the multitude of pit-grave kurgans (i.e., mounded tumuli) that dot the relatively flat landscape of the Plain (see Ecsedy 1979). The burials found in such tumuli are frequently covered in red ocher and the associated ceramics suggest affinities with cultures further to the east, on the south Russian steppe (Yamna Culture). Although the chronological relationship between the kurgans and the Baden sites remains unclear, Sherratt (1997b:310) has noted that the distribution of the kurgans in the Körös basin are spatially exclusive of the Baden sites. This led him to suggest that the kurgan builders may have been an intrusive group from the east that selectively inhabited those areas that were unoccupied by indigenous Baden agricultural groups (see also Ecsedy 1979).

The vast majority of later Copper Age settlement sites consist only of a few pits. As a result, it is nearly impossible to draw conclusions regarding the relationship between the Baden and kurgan burial traditions based upon information from settlements. This is unfortunate, given the various social changes that occur at the beginning of the Bronze Age in the region (see O’Shea 1996). [an error occurred while processing this directive]