Janus Pannonius Múzeum Évkönyve 43 (1998)( Pécs, 1999)

Régészet - Schléder, Zsolt–T. Biró, Katalin. Petroarchaeological studies on polished stone artifacts from Baranya county, Hungary

A Janus Pannonius Múzeum Évkönyve 43 (1998) 75-101 Pécs, 1999 Petroarchaeological studies on polished stone artifacts from Baranya county, Hungary Zsolt SCHLÉDER and Katalin T. BÍRÓ This study was prepared in the framwork of a large project supported by the National Science Foundation, themes №. T-013638

1 (1994-1997) and T-025086

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. In the second part, the authors intend to give a petroarchaeological-technological summary of the Baranya county workshops, in the first place, Zengővárkony. Introduction The study of polished stone tools is a dynamically developing field of archaeometry, more closely defined, petroarchaeology. Polished stone tools were precious belongings of prehistoric people. This statement is supported by the following observations: - polished stone tools are relatively rare finds in settlement material. Even more rarely we come across complete (finished, unbroken) pieces in settlement context - at the same time, polished stone tools come to light frequently in graves as symbols of wealth and prestige. Also, quite a lot of votive finds (hoards) of polished stone artifacts are known. - polished stone tools are frequently re-used, rejuvenated denoting that they were considered valuable. - production (and not simple re-sharpening) of polished stone tools took place, as we can observe on specialised settlements, close to sources of raw materials and/or in the junction of traffic roads. Such axeproducing settlement has been described from AszódPapi földek (BÍRÓ 1992) and hypothesed on sites lying close to the greenschist quarries of Felsőcsatár (e.g., Sé, Velem: BÍRÓ 1998, HARCOS 1997) and other suitable raw materials, mainly basalt. The obvious richness of the Zengővárkony settlement and cemetery, known as one of the richest site for polished stone tools in Hungary implied the existence of local workshops. Possible candidates for raw material worked locally were granite (often mentioned in old sources of information) and Lower Cretaceous volcanites of the Mecsek Mts., especially tephrite and phonolite. The original intention of the authors was to analyse material from Zengővárkony (Lengyel culture) cemetery, a site which is already famous of its richness in polished stone tools both in graves and settlement layers

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. Sampling, however, included also polished stone tools from other localities in Baranya county. As the primary aim of our study was to investigate the possibility of polished stone tool workshops planted on the Mecsek quarries of volcanites, the wider range of samples in geography and chronological period did not unfavourably influence petroarchaeological conclusions. We are planning to compile, however, a comprehensive catalogue on Zengővárkony polished stone tools, based on the former work of Judit Antoni and Zoltán Almády (ANTONI 1990), István Zalai-Gaál (ZALAI-GAÁL 1991, ZALAI-GAÁL in press) and the observation of the authors in the 2nd part of this study

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. Find circumstances and cultural affiliation of the samples analysed Sites All of the samples analysed came from old collections or excavations, prior to the introduction of standard inventory system in the early fifties. In most cases, the inventory data were not of much help for the determination of the age of the samples. Zengővárkony is an exception from this, coming from controlled excavation yielding material which has known archaeological context (DOMBAY 1939, 1960). For the other localities, only hints can be given. Data from technical literature were collected, based on the card catalogue system of the Archaeological Institute of the HAS and the comprehensive survey of Gábor Bandi (BANDI et al. 1979; Table 1) gives an overview of the archaeological localities of the studied pieces. The geographical distribution of the sites is presented on Fig. 1.