Múzeumi Füzetek Csongrád 2. (Csongrád, 1999.)

HORVÁTH László András – H. SIMON Katalin: Csongrád város története (A kezdetektől a vaskor végéig)

the environment suitable for a new way of life: the beginning of the productive fanning. In all probability this kind of farming arrived to our territory from the south. It was brought by a new population migrating from the Balkans in the 6th millenium B.C. The outstanding unity of the material culture also refers to quick, explosive changes. The eastern part of the Carpathian basin — including the surroundings of Csongrád — became the part of a huge cultural circle spreading from Middle Greece up to the Upper Tisza region. The first settlers belong to the Körös culture, that got its name according to its territorial spread. In the Carpathian basin these communities were the first to make burned ceramic objects: vessels, net-weights, lucernás, human and animal figurines (idols), and the use of polished stone tools started also at that time. To-date we have only a few data on the plant cultivation. Their main food was grain, some types of which we were able to define. In this early period the size of their villages was different. We know long settlements formed along river banks and small, farm like settlements as well. In the surroundings of Csongrád we know several sites of the Körös culture, although the density of settling is less here than in other parts of the Great Hungarian Plain. In Felgyő a vessel with a human face and a bird shaped body was found. József Csalog suggested that it was an image of a bird deity. Another site of the culture was situated in Csongrád-Bokros-Búzás-part, a detail of which was excavated by Nándor Kalicz and János Makkay in 1959. In the eastern part of Hungary the Middle Neolithic Age is associated with the Alföld Linear Pottery Culture. Small (10-20 nr) houses of the settlements, stone and bone tools, pottery types of this culture not even remind the objects of the previous epoch. The finds of the culture spread mostly as far as the valley of the Körös and its tributaries, although to-date we know several sites of the culture also from the vicinity of Hódmezővásárhely. From the region of the mouth of the Hármas-Körös (triple Körös) we know a large number of Middle Neolithic sites. Three of them belong to the surroundings of Csongrád. At two of these sites — in Bokros-Bokrospart and Csanytelek-Ujhalastó — an excavation on large surface was conducted. Inside the settlements a dozen of burials were found. Among them we should mention a child burial from Bokros. Copper beads found around the neck of a five years old girl are the earliest known copper objects of the Szakáihát group. Similar finds were unearthed in one of the Csanytelek graves. We practically have no data on the Late Neolithic period, that is to say the Tisza culture in the surroundings of Csongrád. COPPER AGE Already in the middle of the 19

th century it was known that between the Neolithic and Bronze Age there was a period in the history of mankind which got its name from the first discovered metal, the copper. A strange phenomenon can be observed: while the Neolithic is studied mainly on the basis of its villages, in the find material of the Early and Middle Copper Age the leading role belongs to cemeteries. For a long time archaeology knew nothing about the settlements of the Tiszapolgár culture, the first Copper Age population. The same is the situation with the Bodrogkeresztúr culture of the Middle Copper Age. The form of ceramic vessels went on according to the way defined by the previous age. At the