Janus Pannonius Múzeum Évkönyve 14-15 (1969-70) (Pécs, 1974)

Régészet - K. Zoffmann, Zs.: Anthropological Analysis of the Cemetery at Zengővárkony and the Neolithical Lengyel Culture in SW-Hungary

ANTHROPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF LENGYEL CULTURE 57 Comparison of the series of Zengővárkony and of the pooled series of the Lengyel culture (Lengyel, Vülánykövesd, Zengővárkony) with other neolithic and Bronze Age series The Mediterranean, the Cromagnon and brachycranial types were already wide-spread in Central Europe as early as in the neolithic age. We can trace the Mediterranean type up to Germany in the north, and the Cromagnon type to Bulgaria in the south (GRIMM 1968, CHOCHOL 1964, NEMESKÉRI 1961, NECRASOV— CRISTESCU 1965). The brachycranial forms, though more sporadic, are equally present already at this time (EHG

ARTNER 1959, CHOCHOL 1964, NEMESKÉRI 1951, 1961, NECRASOV—CRISTESCU 1959, 1965). Although the types are more distinct in the individuals of this epoch as in the later prehistoric periods, their simultaneous appearance produces a taxonomic heterogenety in the neolithic series. The statistical comparison of the heterogeneous series of Zengővárkony, which belongs to the Lengyel culture, with the equally heterogeneous series of other perhistoric cultures may furnish data to the connections in time and space between the other populations which had their share in forming the prehistoric cultures. For this comparison I made use of L. S. Penrose's distance-analysis, and it is based on the nine most important measurements which I could take at least on seven skulls which were fit for this purpose. The measurements are as follows: maximum cranial length (1), maximum cranial breadth (8), minimum forehead breadth (9), porion-bregma height (20), upper facial height (48), orbital breadth and height (51 and' 52) and nasal breadth and heigth (54 and 55). Due to the frequent brittleness of the prehistoric skulls the basion-bregma height (17) is not always measurable (also in the Zengővárkony-material I could measure it only in six cases) so I used for my calculation the porion-bregma height, but this way such important groups had to be omitted for the comparison as the prehistoric Bohemian (CHOCHOL 1964), the Greek and the Anatolian series (ANGEL 1944, 1951), where the heigth 17 respectively 21 were recorded. — I included in the comparison only those series were at least seven skulls were fit for the above mentioned measurements. I undertook similar comparative calculations on the pooled male series of the Lengyel culture coming from the cemetery at Zengővárkony, as well as from the two fragmentary cemeteries, with previously published anthropologic material — Lengyel (VIRCHOW 1890, MALÁN 1929) and Vülánykövesd (ZOFFMANN 1968). In spite of the distance in space and partly also in time of the cemeteries of Lengyel, Villánykövesd, and Zengővárkony, it seems reasonable and justified to unite their anthropologic material into one series as — according to their identical archéologie environment and notwithstanding the heterogenity of their metric characteristics — the sigma ratio-value calculated on the basis of the mean-sigma by ALEKSEEV—DEBEC (1964), and given a significancy limit of 1%, shows from the ten measurements we employed only in two cases a significant heterogenity (measurements 8 and 51), while if we make allowance for a 5% significancy limit, the number of measurements showing the heterogenity is four (measurements 8, 17, 51 and 54) — they represent a population with an identical archéologie culture. Although the taxonomic analysis of the material from Lengyel and Villánykövesd, shows also the dominancy of the Mediterranean type, where even the braohycranial element is represented, the more, robust appearance of the Mediterranean taxon there, makes the pooled Lengyel series more heterogeneous than of Zengővárkony (Table 4). The increasing number of cases made it possible to include into our calculation also the basion-bregma height (17) and thus raise the number of the series fit for comparison.

5 To control the eventual desparity caused by the use of two different height measurements, I compared the pooled Lengyel series also on the basis of the porion-bregma height (20) with the same series I used earlier in the case of Zengővárkony. The Dp

2 i.e. the generalized distance values representing the final results of the three calculations are shown on Table 5, together with the P-values indicative of the significance, determined on the basis of the #

2 test. In the case of the nine measurements and making allowance for 1% of probability, the limit of the significant similarity is 2,09, while the limit of the significant non-similarity corresponds to the value of 21,67 Dp

2

. These same values, given a probability of 5%, equal the values of 3,33 respectively 16,92 Dp

2

. • 5 I included in the comparison the compilation of ANGEL (1944) from the series coming from Greece, which he defined as homogenous, so-called „morphologic series" („Basic-White", „Classical Mediterranean", „Basic-White + Classical Mediterranean", „Nordic-Iranian", and „Alpine"). In the series published by ANGEL (1944, 1951) measurements 51.a. was given for orbital breadth; I corrected the difference in relation to the orbital breadth 51 with the help of SCHWIDETZKY's (1967) method (+ 2 mm).