Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 4.-5. 1963-1964 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1965)

Tanulmányok – Abhandlungen - Bóna István: The Peoples of Southern Origin of the Early Bronze Age in Hungary I–II. IV–V, 1963–64. p. 17–63. t. I–XVII.

material of the Caucasian cemeteries (maces, lock-rings, bronze axes and awls) occur in the South —East European region, partly in burial mounds too. But, as we have stated otherwhere, the bronze axes, lock-ring and awls have a priority in the Danubian region, being derived from and brought here through Anatolia, the Aegean and the Balcans. In order to solve this problem it must be kept in mind that the material culture of the Caucasian graves (not only their pottery but also their craftsman­ship in stone, bronze and bone) has a divergent, special character, serving as the base of the millennary local development from the beginn­ing. Just the same petrified millennary local conservatism is characterizing the burial rites, mentioned above, too. M. Gimbutas has connected the mentioned culture, appearing in the Northern Caucasian region at the end of the third millennium, to new Western Asian elements, immigrating from the southern side of the mountain. 185 We have expressed already our views on the com­mon cultural features, repeatedly occurring in the northern foreground of the Caucasus and South —Eastern Europe during the second millennium. 186 We may visualize these cultural influences as parallel phenomena, extending like the prongs of a fork. Impacts are radiat­ing from Western Asia or Anatolia, respect­ively, on both sides of the Black Sea in a manner that the prongs of the fork do not touch each other beyond the sea. This view is unison with the results of Soviet research on the Caucasus. Thus the often similar archaeological phenomena appearing in South —Eastern Eu­rope and the Northern Caucasian region 187 are independent of each other and they may be reduced to a common cultural centre. The single loose file connecting them, the people of the pit-grave tumuli appearing also in South —Eastern Europe at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age, is bringing some scanty Caucasian elements to the West by repeated mediation only; later the connections do not reach even thus far. This Early Bronze Age influence was rather of an ethnic than of a cultural character, as it is best proved by the flourishing Bronze Age of Aegean —Balcanic type in South —Eastern Europe, in Roumania and Hungary in the first place. 185 M. GIMBUTAS: The Prehistory of Eastern Europe, BASPR 20 (1956) 12. 186 Acta Arch. Hung. 12 (1960) 111. 187 We may mention among these the two-handled oval amphorae, two-handled store-jars, one-handled mugs and cups, occurring in the Caucasian grave in the first half of the second millennium, in one word the same Anatolian forms which appear in South-Eastern Europe at the same time. 188 W. F.ALBRIGHT: The Archaeology of Palestine. (Har­Of all these we may draw two important conlusions. The first is that even the territories occupied by the people of the ochre-grave tumuli lack the rite of cist burial and the decisive elements of the typical archaeological material of the Northern Caucasus, thus they could have hardly been handed over by this people to the Somogyvár group. The second is that these phenomena are Anatolian deri­vation also in the Northern Caucasus, accord­ing to the opinion expressed by a part of stu­dents, so we might reckon with their Anatolian origin in the Somogyvár group and its relativ­es too; naturally they did not reach these groups by the route on the northern shores of the Black Sea but by the Bosporos one, borne out also by their cultural elements. Ow­ing to the mentioned deficiencies of research we cannot go farther than to suggest this pos­sibility. For the rest cist burial does not play an important role if we investigate the origin of the rite. Sooner or later it appears from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, independently of age or people. It is connected with the ide­as of protecting the dead, the fear of their re­turn, but mainly the view that the grave is a house of the dead. Naturally the expression of these ideas in burial had a centre of develop­ment, a period and a route of extension. In Hungary e.g. they came to light in the So­mogyvár group for the first time. The ap­pearance of the rite here is in a close con­nection with the origin of the folk represent­ing the material culture of the group. In Pa­lestine the Ghassul cemetery 188 contains contr­acted skeletons buried in stone-cist graves as early as in the fourth millennium. In Anatolia the cist grave with a contracted burial is frequ­ent from the Chalkolithic at Alishar Hüyük, 1 * 9 its practice may be followed through the Cop­per Age till the Bronze Age continually. The cist graves at Polatli are derived from the Copper Age too, 190 those at Kül-Tepe in re­veal their use in the second millennium. Sy­rian cist graves are important from the point of view of their radiation towards the Cauca­sus. At the turn of the third and the second millennia we meet them at Til-Barsib 1S2 Ras Shamra 192 and Tell Soukas. 1 ** In our judgment burial below a mound is connected with similar ideas. Therefore the burial mounds appearing on European soil can­mondsworth 1960) 188. 189 H. H. VON DER OSTEN: The Alishar Höyük I (Chicago 1937) Figs 56-57, vol. II Fig. 149. 190 S. LLOYD: Early Anatolia (Harmondsworth 1956) 95-96. 191 Ibid. 122. 192 CL. F. A. SCHAEFFER: Stratigraphie 81, Pl. 20; F. THU­REAU-D ANGIN— M. DUNAND: Til-Barsib (Paris 1936) 96—, Fig. 28. Pl. XXXII nos 1-2. 193 CL. F. A. SCHAEFFER: op. cit. Fig. 50. 194 Ibid. p. 80. 59

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