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
86 Nándor Kalicz-Judit Koós with Transylvania was probably established during the procurement of obsidian from deposits in the Tokaj- Zemplén Mountains (and perhaps the Avas Mountains in Transylvania), although the exact date of when the first contacts were established remains unknown. Mention must be made of the Middle Neolithic pottery distributed over an extensive region incorporating the eastern Slovakian Plain, the foothills of the Carpathians in Carpatho-Ukraine, the Upper Tisza region and north-western Transylvania. This pottery is decorated with incised patterns and painted designs of dark coloured, delicately painted bundles of lines, as well as with painted bands accompanying incised motifs and, more rarely, wide painted bands. The growing proportion of painted decoration from the early to the late ALBK phase raises several questions, many of which cannot be answered yet. It would appear that after the disappearance of the Méhtelek group, the technique of vessel painting in the Szatmár group was adopted from the Middle Neolithic of Transylvania, reflected in the appearance of the distinctive beading-like edging of the painted bands across the distribution of the Szatmár group in the Alföld. After some time, this lavish painted decoration was enriched with the combination of painted and incised motifs in the ALBK 1, especially in the Szamos region (which could rightly be called Szamos region painted pottery), accompanied by the increasing proportion of pinched decoration. One of the most intriguing questions is when this elaborate and increasingly dominant vessel painting, differing from the painted decoration noted at Mezőkövesd and Füzesabony, had appeared. On the testimony of the evidence from Mezőkövesd-Mocsolyás and Füzesabony-Gubakút, vessel painting combined with incised decoration appeared in an early, but yet more specifically indefinable phase in the southwestern distribution of the Szatmár group. We cannot reject the possibility that the assumed pre-Neolithic local elements also had a share in the formation of the distinctive material culture of the Szatmár group. Many scholars date the initial period of the painted pottery groups in eastern Slovakia, Carpatho-Ukraine, northwestern Transylvania and the Upper Tisza-Szamos- Kraszna region in Hungary to the same time as the appearance of the Szatmár group. Among these, the Pi§col( group of north-western Transylvania exhibits similar typological traits, as well as a growing emphasis on painted vessel decoration that became increasingly dominant. The barely changing material culture and the chronology of the painted pottery groups in eastern Slovakia, flourishing from the Szatmár group to the late ALBK phase, was outlined by Stanislav Siska and Marián Vizdal in a series of authoritative studies, whose main conclusions are still valid today. The contemporaneous sites in the Upper Tisza-Szamos region yielding similar assemblages characterised by vessels with painted and pinched decoration have been described by József Korek. The theoretical possibility of dividing the Szatmár group into three chronological phases based on the Mezőkövesd-Mocsolyás site needs to be modified in the light of recent research findings. The Kőtelek site representing the formative Szatmár phase was probably co-eval with the late phase of the Alföld Körös culture and the Méhtelek period. However, it is the currently known single site from this period. It would appear that the Szatmár phase of the Mocsolyás site post-dates the Kőtelek site and represents the group’s second phase, the period when the group’s uniform material and spiritual culture had evolved and become distributed from Füzesabony-Gubakút to Novajidrány in the north and to Ebes in County Hajdú-Bihar beyond the Tisza. We did not identify any cultural elements in the assemblage from Mocsolyás that would confirm our earlier assumption on the existence of a third typological phase in the Szatmár group. In the light of the above, it seems likely that the longeval Körös communities along the Triple Körös in the middle Alföld had survived for some time even after the disintegration of the large Körös complex and that the ALBK communities only advanced to the southernmost boundary of the culture’s distribution in the Maros region during the early classical period. It is possible that the sites with painted and pinched decoration in the Szamos region appeared at this time. It must be noted that our own analysis of the chronological relations between the Szatmár group of the Alföld and the painted pottery group in the Szamos region led to roughly the same conclusions as the assertions made by foreign scholars addressing questions of chronology. Michael Strobel’s excellent typological analysis of the ALBK pottery was only mistaken regarding the assessment of the early phase owing to terminological misunderstandings. Mezőkövesd-Mocsolyás and Füzesabony-Gubakút, two Szatmár sites yielding virtually identical finds, lie no more than 20 km apart. The layout of the Mocsolyás settlement differs from the spatial organisation of the nearby Gubakút site and its occupation phases. We performed a macro-analysis at Mezőkövesd-Mocsolyás, while László Domboróczki distinguished various occupation phases based on the site’s micro-analysis, attempting to correlate the radiocarbon data with the settlement’s layout and the shifts in its occupation. Unfortunately, the role of pottery, the third crucial factor for constructing a detailed chronology, remains unknown to us. The finds from the excavation include a handful of vessel fragments from the late ALBK period, reflecting a very light, archaeologically barely visible occupation. These finds can be taken to reflect a barely perceptible late occupation phase at Mocsolyás, which is chronologically separate from and later than the uniform Szatmár finds presented in the above. The Szatmár communities
