A Békés Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei 2. (Békéscsaba, 1973)
Maráz Borbála: La Tene-kori magányos sírok és kistemetők a Dél-Alföldről
the exception of the Mártély grave (which alone may be regarded as belonging to the richer, ruling layer), all of them are common burials. Nor is it probable that, for instance, the weapon-supplemented graves are the individual burying-places of soldiers who were killed during the marauding expeditions of migrations, for they occur in the small cemeteries together with female graves. These burials are not the results of a brief, transitory Celtic passage or a scattered settlement, and they do not show that the Celts merely passed through the region of the South Hungarian Plain in the course of their raids towards the south and south-east. Thus, there is a continual increase in the number of cemeteries in this region which contain sometimes more than a hundred graves (Békéssámson, Gyoma —Egei halom, Orosháza—Gyopáros), and this points to a more considerable Celtic occupation. The isolated graves and small cemeteries show that the Celts do not exhibit the phenomenon observed in the migration-period nomadic peoples that the cemetery was the "centre" of a larger community based on kinship, where everyone was interred regardless of his dwelling-place (or simply the lack of a permanent dwelling-place). The considerable fluctuations in the number of graves in the Celtic cemeteries may have been caused by the fact that these cemeteries simply followed the settlement system. Accordingly, the isolated graves and small cemeteries may have been attached to farms consisting of only one or two houses, to vicus-type settlements or to settlements inhabited for only a very brief period ; the large cemeteries sometimes containing more than a hundred graves may have belonged to extensive villages or oppida. We know about such settlement-forms of the Celts from archaeological observations, but primarily from the writings of the ancient authors (Caesar 72-73 , Tacitus 74 , Appianos 75 ). However, the same is shown by our knowledge to date of the settlements on the South Hungarian Plain: in addition to the oppidum-like settlements 76_77 , others which were extremely small and inhabited for brief periods are also known from Csongrád — Vidre island 78 , from Szegvár 79 , from the Ószentiván VIII find-site 80 , from Hódmezővásárhely—Fehértópart 81 and from Kiszombor 82 . Our presently known La Tene-age settlements and cemeteries indicate therefore that the appreciable differences in extent of the cemeteries have been caused by the settlement-forms and settlement system of the Celts. 62
