Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 14. 1973 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1975)

Tanulmányok – Abhandlungen - Bognár-Kutzián Ida: Some new early La Tene finds in the Northern Danube Basin. XIV, 1973. p. 35–46.

were used for covering or for surrounding the grave in about ten per cent of the cases. This ritual seems to have been more frequent with cremation burials than with skeleton graves. At the actual stage of analysis we may presume that some fifty graves belong to the early period and some more burials are likely to turn out as belonging to this period. Close to threefoursth of the fifty graves are skeleton burials. It is interesting to note that in spite of the many male burials which are represented mainly by knives, spearheads are few among finds and only one sword is known which is bent tree-fold. The lack of swords is uncommon in warriorgraves and differs from the contemporary cemeteries(

5

). I shall now dwell on a few finds and a few complexes of the cemetery which seems to be the earliest in La Tène В or even permit an earlier dating, at least as to their origin, and on some representatives of phase B. Grave 376 is one of the best proofs for determinig the relative date of the cemetery's beginning. The ashes and cremated human bones were found over a larger area and the grave carried traces of having been damaged. Except for a bronze disc pierced in the center (cf. PL IV) the grave contained only pottery, including two bowls of outstanding importance, with a horned handle and an omphalos. One of the handles is surrounded with two rings (.PL III, 1 — the height of the vessel is 7.5 cm, the diamter of the rim 19.6 cm). The other bowl (height 7.1 cm, rim diameter 19.9 cm) is of a much finer execution (PL II). One of the fragmentary horns of the handle is decorated with a knob. The concentric circ

]

es stamped on the handle made it like a bull head or a ram head and recur on the inside. On the bottom of the vessel stamped double arcs interlock groups of three concentric circles. The same decoration surrounds the omphalos inside of the vessel(

(i

). Among the accompanying finds we come across two urn-like vessels and the fragments of a bowl. The pottery is wheel-made except one of the urns. RÉCSEY, Római castrum, és újabb régészeti leletek Esztergom és Hont megyében. AÉrt, XIV, 1894, 68 — 70; L. MÁRTON, o.e., 12; ID., Das Fundinventar der Frühlatene-Gräber. Dolg, IX-X, 1934, 130; I. HUNYADY, o.e., 52; ID., Kelták a Kárpátmedencében. RégFüz, 1/2, 1957, 56; J. FILIP, Keltövé ve Stfedni Evropë. Praha, 1956, 72, 308, figs. 20, 90; É. F. PETRES, On Celtic animal and human sacrifices. AArchHung, XXIV, 1972, 370-371; M. PÁRDUCZ, Western relations of the Scythian age culture of the Great Hungarian Plain. AAntHung, XIII, 1965, 274; I. TORMA in MittderUAW, 1970, 125-126, 1971, 133-134, 1973, 155. (5) E.g. at Ménfőcsanak: A. UZSOKI, Rapport préliminaire sur les fouilles de la nécropole Celte de Ménfőcsanak. Arrabona, XII, 1970, 17-55, 55-56. (6) The decorations were dealt with in detail in E. Jerem's рарзг on stamped pottery at the conference: The Celts in Central Europe (Székesfehérvár 1974). The two bowls with horned handles are unique in the Hungarian material but their analogies in the Carpathian Basin have been known for a long time from Stupava in Western Slovakia(

7

). The almost identical bowls of the inhumation cemetery tally with those from Basaharc even in their stamped ornaments. Neither these, nor the bowl with inverted rim, nor the biconical urn can be associated with any grave complexes. These latter forms have their parallels at Basaharc, the urn having its analogy exactly in grave 376 and in grave 377 laying near-by. Except for the sword, the finds of the Stupava warrior-grave have their counterparts at Basaharc: the closed bronze ring used as a bracelet, an early spearhead having a long socket and shaped like a narrow willow-leaf (Pi. V 2c). Despite their ill preservation, the Basaharc knives reveal somewhat different shaping of their hafts, The most frequent knife type of the cemetery is the one with an arched back and a narrow tang (Pi. V 2d,e,f) which — as attested by the Szentlőrinc cemetery — again permits an early dating. Similar knife variants are also known from Scythian Age cemeteries(

8

). The early swords and the slashing knife link the finds from the Petőháza graves (Sopron county) with the Stupava circle. Of early origin are also their two neckrings, whose good analogies in the form of neckrings (PL 11

12; Pl. VIII; PL VI 2d) and armrings (Pi. VI2c) can be found at Basaharc. It is undecided if the bracelet having a tiny lug on each end belonged to the damaged skeleton grave 5 covered with stones at Diirrnberg(

9

). The views of archaeologists differ as to whether Celts are buried in the ten Stupava graves or people from the local population who had come under Celtic (7) J. EISNER, Slovensko v Pravëku. Bratislava, 1933, 168-169, 308, pi. LIII 1, 2, 4; I. HUNYADY, О, С DissPann, 11/18, 1944, 3, 17, 22, 23, 133. - She refers to three bowls of a horned handle from WienLeopoldau as analogies of the Stupava ones outside of the Carpathian Basin. She has seen them in the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (ibid., 3, 17). Dr. S. Nebehay kindly completed the list of these bowls (from skeleton graves 2, 5, 11) with one of the Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte der Universität Wien. He also drew my attention to the similar handle fragment of a bowl from Pillischsdorf (II. SCHWAMMENHÖFER, Pillichsdorf. Fundberichte aus Österreich, XI, 1972, 80, fig. 140.) (8) E. JEREM, The Late Iron Age cemetery at Szentlőrinc. AArchHung, XX, 1968, 194, 195, pi. XXXVI 610. — Recently M. Szabó dates the cemetery in the 4th century (Eléments régionaux dans Vart des Celtes Orientaux. EC, XIII, 1971, 753.) - For some knife variants, see M. PÁRDUCZ, Le cimetière hallstattien de Szentes-VekerzugII. AArchHung, IV, 1954, pl. XVII 5; ID., Le cimetière hallstattien de Szentes-Vekerzug III. AArchHung, VI, 1955, pi. III 4; ID., Scythian Age cemetery at Tápiószele. AArchHung, XVIII, 1966, pis. LÏX, 4, LXIV, 20. (9) L. BELLA, Petőházi leletekről. AÉrt, XII, 1892, 346, figs. 1 —4,10 — 11 in p. 347; — L. M ár t о n erroneously identified it with Pötteisdorf (о. с, AHung, XI, 1933,56,57). - J. EISNER, o.e., pi. LH, 1, 4, 5; E. PENNINOER, Der Dürrnberg bei Hallein I. MB, XVI, 1972, 46, pl. IV, 19. 36