Folia archeologica 54.

Oravecz Hargita: Újkőkori arcos hombár töredékei Tiszaföldvárról

Ú|KŐKORI ARCOS HOMBÁR TÖREDÉKEI TLSZAFÖLDVÁRRÓI. 67 use of red, often combined with yellow, was customary on the face pots of the Szakáihát culture. A design painted in a bright mauvish colour, however, is a typical trait of the neighbouring Esztár culture, on whose vessels painting of this type was applied thickly, in a slip-like manner before firing, as on the face pot from Beretytyószentmárton. A roughly 1 cm wide crimson band frames the top of the forehead and the base of the neck, flanked by incised lines of which only traces survive in some spots. Similar bands can be noted on the forehead and neck part of the face pots from Battonya-Vidpart. The eyes are marked by deep incisions, the nose was separately modelled and painted red with a narrow crimson stripe. The mouth too is indicated by a deeply incised line, underneath which is an M shaped, slightly irregular motif extending to the band encircling the neck (Fig. 1). The design itself is hardly unusual, but its technical execution certainly is, seeing that only the incised variant of the design incorporating the M motif appears on the face pots of the Szakáihát culture, while the similar vessels of the Esztár culture usually bear the painted variant filled with vertical hatching. The M motif itself is generally interpreted as a symbolic sign. The smaller fragment comes from the vessel's back side corresponding to the nape and the coiffure. The technique and mode of decoration is identical to that of the other fragment, the only difference being the pattern. The red painted, clay-coated fragment is decorated with two interlocking, vertical, crimson bands (Fig. 2) recalling the comb teeth and the comb motif of the period's other face pots. Incised, slightly more angular and smaller variants of this motif occur on the face pots of the Szakáihát and Tisza cultures, on which they appear as a decorative element in combination with the coiffure on the back side, as on the jars from Battonya-Gödrösök and Öcsöd-Kováshalom. The motif also appears on figurines such as the ones from Szentes-Ilonapart and Öcsöd-Kováshalom. Similarly to the M sign, then, the comb motif can also be regarded as a symbol rather than a simple ornamental element because it occurs infrequently and only on extraordinary artefacts. Remains of a vertical incised line can be made out beside the design on the right side of the fragment (Fig. 2) which was part of the decoration between front and the back side. A similar line had probably been incised on the other side too: together with the two horizontal lines mentioned above, they were part of the panels enclosing and separating the face in front and the nape in the back. The practice of dividing the vessel neck into panels is not uncommon; a similar division can be noted on the pieces from Battonya-Parázs-tanya, Battonya-Vidpart and face pot 2 from Csanytelek. Although nothing has survived of the horizontal incised line or the crimson band appearing on the front side, it seems likely that both had a continuation on the back side. Despite the fragmentary survival of the nape and the coiffure, we may assume that the design had filled the entire panel on the back side, and that the assumed comb motif had been depicted with at least three or four teeth and not just the surviving two (Fig. 2). Even though the lower part of the storage jar did not survive, the fracture surface indicates that it had also been coated with clay and red in colour, and had perhaps been decorated with crimson painting similarly to the vessel's upper part, or had borne an incised pattern of recumbent interlocking spirals resembling the design of the face pots from the Szentes area, Csanytelek and Kömlő. The formal traits and decoration of the two fragments indicate that they come from a storage jar blending the ceramic traditions of Szakáihát and Esztár pottery. The former is represented by the vessel form, the face depiction combining incised and separately modelled elements, the decoration of the forehead and the neck, the M motif and the division of the neck into panels, while the latter by the mauvish-red painting and the preponderance of painted elements. (The influence of the Esztár culture, as well as imports from the Esztár distribution have been identified