Dr. T. Tóth szerk.: Etudes d'anthropologie historique concernant le bassin du Danube moyen (Anthropologia Hungarica 7/1-2. Budapest, 1966)

ANTHROPOLOGIA HUNGARICA TOME VII. 1*66. N< Section Anthropologique du Mus6e d'Histoire Naturelle A POPULATION OP THE SCYTHIAN PERIOD BETWEEN THE DANUBE AND THE TISZA Gy. Dezső Excavation circumstances In 1961, a cremation cemetery was found in the Józan area of the village Szabadszállás, County Bács-Kiskun. In the course of excavation, there began the exposition of a cemetery from the Scythian period. Exoavation activities were continued in the years 1962, 1963. Archeological excavation was made by A. HORVÁTH, Director of.the J. Katona Museum, Kecskemét, and Mrs. E. HORVÁTH. I also have participated in the initial section of the excavation, succeeded later by S. WENGER, anthropologist. The archeological material was deposited in the J.

Katona Museum, Kecskemát, the anthropological finds in the Anthropologioal Department of the Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest. On the basis of the archeological material-oomplex, namely „oharaoteristical, high-eared jars, bowls with oonstrioted rima, doubly-cupped urns, as well as graphltized, hand-formed day vessels, further knives, shell and glass-paste beads, bronze arrow-heads, bracelets, clay stamps, earrings, buttons and stoneflags with worn edges", A. HORVÁTH /8/ defined the date of the cemetery as belonging to the Scythian period. Burial means: skeletal /mostly contracted, some extended/, cremated, and umed. According to the oral communication of A. HORVÁTH in 1964, the exposed section can be regarded as a complete excavation or a delimited section of a larger cemetery, but in any case a unit in itself. • The archeological material had not yet been published, hence I cannot refer to it in details. A short survey of the Scythian period in Hungary Of the historians of antiquity, HERODOTOS of the V

th century B.C.

,discussed in details the customs of the Scythians living in the neighbourhood of ancient Greece. The Scythians, settling in Hungary, belonged to the tribes migrating in earlier tiroes from the environs of the Blaok Sea to the Poltava and Kiev regions, and their first immigrant groupa, settling later in Transylvania, crossed the passes of the Carpathians about 600 B.C. In their wake,soon another Scythian wave arrived, reaching also the Great Ilains around 550 B.C. In the Transdanubium, only sporadic findings are known. The major portion of the Scythians,