Folia archeologica 34.

MIDDLE PALAEOLITHIC INDUSTRY OF TATA 13 III. Connections a) The narrower environments of the site Among the studies dealing with Tata there is scarcely one that would not mention the Szeleta cave stating that the inhabitants of both sites had nothing in common. This can perhaps be attributed to the first publication by Kormos where the author compared

—with a thoroughness highly over the average level of the contemporary demands

—the material of both sites. The reason was that in the time of the excavation only the Szeleta and Krapina caves were known and Kormos could make a comparison on the basis of the given data only. (We cannot say anything more of the Krapina that Kormos would not have mentioned.) We have to do away with drawing a parallel between Tata and Szeleta: the two sites resp. two industries have nothing in common: there are different ecologies, different raw materials, different techniques, different type lists, different contacts. The remark that "the Tata industry took up a pseudo-Szeletian character" is not clear enough.

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4 L. Vértes might have thought here of a maximal adaptation to the environments, of the standardization of the tool set, of the fully developed, constant technics and of the general impression the Tata implements make on us. The author formulated the components of this general impression having different source values in mathematical-statistical formulas. If we found industries elaborated with similar methods, also implement sets separated by greater chronological and cultural distances could be compared with good results. The author could have striven rather for proving a continuous development from Tata to the cultures succeeding chronologically. In recent times, with a revaluation of the sites and comparisons from all over the continent, our image of the Middle Palaeolithics of the Carpathian Basin is being changed. The comparison of the Tata industry with that of the Szeleta or Jankovich caves cannot be inserted in this picture; nor is it necessary, either. Gábori

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5 explores the connections of the site from two directions: on the one side he goes over the Hungarian sites to be connected with Tata and on the other side he inserts it into a Central European cultural circle. To the large groups of our Moustérian sites described by him

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e — a South-East-European Charentian of South-Western attraction — Tata of a special development — the bifacial Jankovichian — Bükk, a typical Central European Moustérian — another old bifacial industry, also living in the Bükk, is attached: the Bábonyian.

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7 Our picture of the Hungarian Middle Palaeolithics is being enrichened in a very fortunate wav. 2

4 Vértes, L. et al., Tata. 242.; Gábori, M., Les civilisations. . . 149.; Freund, G., Die Blattspitzen. (Bonn 1952) 93. 2

5 Gábori, M., Les civilisations. . . loc. cit. 2

0 Ibid. 180. 2

7 Kinger, A., Egy levéleszközös formakör szórványleletei a Bükk hegység területén Szakdolgozat. (Thesis). (Budapest 1981).; Id., Bábonien, eine mittelpaläolithische Blattwerkzeugindustrie in Nordost-Ungarn. DissArch. 10. (Budapest 1982)