Fitz Jenő (szerk.): Die aktuellen Fragen der Bandkeramik - István Király Múzeum közelményei. A. sorozat 18. A Pannon konferenciák aktái 1. (Székesfehérvár, 1972)

J. Nandris: Kapcsolatok a mérsékelt égőr legkorábbi újkőkora és a vonaldíszes kerámia között

RELATIONS BETWEEN THE MESOLITHIC,

THE FIRST TEMPERATE NEOLITHIC, ANI) THE BANDKERAMIK: THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM

In this paper I wish to consider three major aspects of human culture and the relationships wich may exist between them, rather than their own internal relationships. I have considered some of the detailed evidence, with a view to clarifying the nature of the problem, rather than solving it. A paper of this scope is not the place to present a mass of such evidence, and there may be a great deal more which goes against this formulation. The published and unpublished material of the Bandkeramik alone, quite apart from that which is relevant to the Bandkeramik from other contexts, is already enormous. Nevertheless a general survey of the Bandkeramik problem, more especially in the centre and east, together with that of the First Temperate Neolithic, may be of some value. It could be stressed from the outset that to compare resemblances between material traits is not to establish relationships between them, and that by the same token relationships between geographically or culturally distinct areas are not necessarily documented by resemblances in material traits. Although, because of the nature of the problem, this paper is not very rigorously organised, 1 shall in general start by referring superficially to some environmental facts, and then consider the nature and relationships of the First Temperate Neolithic, the Bandkeramik, and finally the Mesolithic.

In the earliest stages of the history of the European Neolithic, before about the year 4000 B. C., it is the relationship between these three aspects of society which is of outstanding interest. We should perhaps emphasise that they are social as well as economic forms. Their problems are in a sense problems of horizontal stratigraphy, since although stratigraphies undoubtedly exist they do not usually occur in deeply stratified deposits, but evolve over many centuries on separate sites of relatively short duration This accounts for a heavy reliance on the typology of their material remains, which it must be admitted has not solved the question of the relation between them, and only partly succeeds in presenting a picture of how they arose and developed. The more highly elaborated any typological scheme of périodisation becomes, the less flexible is it in the service of the explanation which is our ultimate objective. We wish to know what processes were operating to produce any relationships; these processes can be subsumed under the two main headings of diffusion and differentiation. I do not wish to enter into the sub-categories of these headings here, but many of our explanations will be seen to come under one or the other, with an important qualification.

The Mesolithic occupation is neither completely homogeneous nor very well defined over the areas of central and south-east Europe wich concern us, nor in fact has „Tardenoisian" the definite meaning once attributed to it. Broadly speaking, the most prominent stone industry in thelater stages is one of „Tardenoisian” affinities, characterised by blade and trapeze forms, but with many local variants, and including in some areas (among which the northern part of Eastern Hungary is especially relevant) a macrolithic component. An important fact, however, links the Mesolithic with the other two forms of society, and dissociates it from the Late Glacial societies which were ancestral to it in respect of hunting technology. The Neothermal period had by this stage reached a climax of a sort in the climate of the Altithermal, corresponding to the warm and damp Atlantic period which prevailed in western Europe between about 5200 — 3000 B. C. It is thus important to consider these various modes of existence in relation to this environmen61