A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve, 1971. 2. (Szeged, 1974)

Ecsedy, István: A New Item Relating the Connections with the East in the Hungarian Copper Age

Fig. 4. CsongrádKettőshalom. The trapezoid-profiled obsidian blade of the beads — in Marosdécse strings of beads — at the legs and the pelvis. From the point of view of the cultural homogenity the presence of long trapezoid-profiled stone-knives in both places — sometimes in the same position — is of great importance. In the case of the cemetery of Marosdécse István Kovács has already pointed out to the special importance played by these in the ritual.

4 Among the Hungarian Copper Age cultures it is only the Tiszapolgár and Bodrogkeresztur cultures that can be taken into consideration in connection with the Csongrád—Marosdécse complex. What refers to its furniture the Csongrád grave can be connected to either of these related cultures. Certain forms of pottery of the Marosdécse cemetery and the ornament made up from stamped circles sometimes arranged into triangles point to the culture of Tiszapolgár, while the small copper-awls occurring in several burial-places as well as the copper axe-adze discovered in the area of the cemetery refers rather to the period of the Bodrogkeresztur culture.

5 It seems to be likely that the cemetery of Marosdécse can be realized as the "terminus ante quern" from the point of view of the more exact relative chronology of the Csongrád grave, or perhaps it is exactly of the same age. On the basis of the arguments brought up above we do not think it likely that the Csongrád grave could be posterior to the cemetery of Marosdécse; consequently, by no means can be equal in age with the pit-grave kurgans of the Great Hungarian Plain, the analogies of which in the West-Ukraine are positively posterior to the Bodrogkeresztur culture. We shall later come back to the assumption that the cemetery of Marosdécse — on the basis of the copper torques found in one of the graves — is definitely of a later date than the Bodrogkeresztur culture of the Trans-Tisza territory, and it represents one of the latest complexes of the people of the pit-grave kurgans in the Carpathian basin.

6 The most important prehistoric problem to be raised in connection with the grave of Csongrád and Marosdécse cemetery is the relationship of the Eastern part of Hungary with the Moldavian and Ukrainian territories at the time of the Cucuten4 Kovács, /., A marosdécsei... 5. fig. 2. 1., plates 5—7. About the placing of the "ochreknobs" and beads see: ibid. 7. (Graves 3 and 4.) and 17—20. 5 ibid. 20.; B.-Kutzián, I., ibid.; Horedt, K., Die Kupferzeit in Transsilvanien. Apulum. VII/I. 1968. 110—111. The small-size copper hatchets are general in the graves of Marosdécse, and their occurrance is similarly frequent in certain cemeteries of the Bodrogkeresztur culture, where the proportion of the W

—O-orientated graves are of great significance. (The graves of the Marosdécse cemetery are SW-NE-orientated). see Patay, P., A javarézkor néhány etnikai és időrendi kérdéséről. (Fol. Arch. XXI. 1970. 17. note 32. These copper-pins were discovered in Marosdécse in many cases near the ochreknob placed into the grave. It is easy to imagine that these pins served for tattooing.) ср.: Birket

—Smith, K., A kultúra ösvényei Budapest 1969. 178—179.) 6 This view was represented by Gyula Gazdapusztai (Rézkorkutatásunk problémái). Lecture given at the 5th Archeological Conference at Szeged, April 1968. The text of the lecture was not published. 12