Kalicz Nándor - Koós Judit: Mezőkövesd-Mosolyás. A neolitikus Szatmár-csoport (AVK I) települése és temetője a kr. e. 6. évezred második feléből - Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén megye régészeti emlékei 9. (Miskolc, 2014)
Mezőkövesd-Mocsolyás - A brief overview of the Szatmár group (ALBK 1) in the light of the excavations and the assessment of the site and its finds
84 Nándor Kalicz-Judit Koós the find assemblages representing the group share many similarities and they are uniformly distributed in northeastern Hungary, eastern Slovakia and north-western Transylvania. Unique forms As on other sites of the Szatmár group, the small, rectangular, domestic altars with low walls set on four feet are among the most typical finds at Mocsolyás, where they were represented by a large number of fragments. The high number of miniature vessels recovered from various features is noteworthy both at this site and on the group’s other settlements. The vessels described below are all rarely encountered types. Some pieces such as the small vessels with pointed base are known from sites lying at some distance from each other (Mezőkövesd-Mocsolyás and Novajidrány), where they appear in roughly similar form. Other pieces are represented by strainers, scooping vessels, imitation leather vessels and steep-sided oval vessels. The possible reason for the lack of unique clay vessels is that wares which did not come into contact with fire and were probably used for a variety of purposes other than cooking had been made from organic materials such as wood, bark and leather, and that they were easier and simpler to make than their clay counterparts. This is also true of bowls made from organic materials and it is unclear why so many miniature and small and mediumsized simple clay bowls had been made. ORNAMENTATION The ornamental repertoire is rather simple: the patterns adorning the vessels are made up of straight or curvilinear lines, or of meandric designs incised on the body of the ceramics, as well as on the human and animal figurines and the small altars. The incised patterns differ little from the ornamental repertoire of the classical ALBK period. While the formative period is characterised by more widely spaced single lines, we can also note the appearance of decorative motifs that evolved into the dense linear bundles, which became the hallmark of the ALBK from the classical phase onward. Two variants can be noted in painted decoration: the first, the primary, was painting the vessel after firing, while the second was performed before the vessel was fired and involved the creation of designs in dark hues using blackish and brownish colours. Painting was used for filling the incised patterns, for designs of wide painted bands edged with a beading-like motif, semicurves filled with vertical and horizontal hatching, parallel bands, circles, dots, straight or curvilinear bands, wide spirals and their variants. Another popular ornamental mode was the combination of painted and incised decoration, which was widespread not only in the distribution of the Szatmár group, but gradually became dominant in the Upper Tisza region and along the major rivers in eastern Slovakia, Carpatho-Ukraine and north-western Transylvania from the early classical ALBK period. The wide painted bands edged with a beading-like motif, a decorative style peculiar to the Szatmár group, disappeared in the north-eastern Alföld and the subsequent development of the material culture took a slightly different direction. Although more rarely, red ochre was used in vessel painting for accentuating the incised meandric patterns, usually on small altars and small statuettes. Many vessel fragments had remains of pigment on their inner side, suggesting that they had been used for storing ochre. Larger, thick-walled household vessels and storage jars were decorated with short incisions over the entire vessel surface, or with single or paired finger impressions, a decorative technique surviving from the cultures of the preceding period. Another popular decorative technique was the covering of the vessel surface with nail impressions and channelled barbotine decoration involving the splashing of the vessel surface with semi-liquid clay into which patterns were drawn using fingertips. These decorative techniques are all characteristic surface treatments applied in the late phase of the Alföld Körös culture. Other finds Bone spoons, embodying the legacy of the massive spatulas of the Körös culture, occur in a remarkably high number at Mocsolyás. The use of these bone implements spread only northward from Anatolia up to the Carpathian Basin. The main difference between the earlier spatulas and the later bone spoons of the Szatmár group is that the latter are flatter and more fragile, and that they were almost exclusively polished from cattle ribs. Their prolific number and simple form can be explained by the easy technique of their manufacture. Bone spoons representing a modified manufacturing technique and a different raw material (ribs instead of the earlier metapodials) can be found over an extensive area from Bulgaria to the Carpathian Basin, and in contrast to the spatulas, their use extended as far as the Rhine region. Comparable bone spoons were used from the earliest to the latest phases of the Vinca culture, distributed in the northern Balkans. Interestingly enough, the use of these artefacts did not continue during the early classical and more developed (Tiszadob) phase of the ALBK. The rich diversity of human and animal figurines and of the mixed human-animal statuettes is another hallmark of the Szatmár group, especially in view of the finds from Füzesabony-Gubakút, Mezőkövesd-Mocsolyás and Novajidrány. The most distinctive traits of the human slab figurines are their oblong body, the emphatically modelled, usually triangular head, and the slightly tilted, upward-looking face, all of which can be derived
