Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 16. 1975 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1978)

Tanulmányok – Abhandlungen - Makkay János: Excavations at Bicske. I, 1960. The Early Neolithic – The Earliest Linear Band Ceramic. p. 9–60.

Pottery decorations Decoration types vary on both the fine and coarse ware. On the fine pottery one can see the following decoration types: 1. painting 2. channelling, 3. impressed motifs, 4. pattern burnishing, 5. stroke burnishing, 6. incised motifs, 7. relief-like, plastic, appliqué motifs. On the coarse ware surface roughening was the most common decorative technique with many variants such as true barbotine and channelled, fluted and sprinkled barbotine. More infrequently one finds incisions, cut-in ornaments, stroked motifs and rarely appliqué motifs, pinched impressions, finger nail impressions, appliqué bands, knobs and handles. Decorations of the fine ware 1. Painting. From the whole sherd inventory from the three features in question only one sherd is painted (Cat. No. 37). It comes from House 1. 1971. It comes from the lower portion of a flat based bowl with thin dark vertical bands painted on a light red smoothed surface. It is an unique piece in the material of the Early Linear Pottery in Transdanubia, and is probably connected with the painted ware of the early phase of the Alföld Linear Pottery culture in the Great Hungarian Plain. 2. Channelling. There are only two pieces having true channelling, a pedestalled bowl (Cat. No. 16) and a simple sherd (Cat. No. 28). On the pedestalled bowl, the fine channelling decorates only the upper part of the bowl, between the neck line and the carinaton. The second piece comes from the lower portion of a flat based bowl (Cat. No. 28). Since its surface is worn, any possible evidence of polishing has been removed. The channelling can be seen on its lower portion, extending to the bottom edge. The channels lie in increasingly oblique angles around the vessel base and probably covered the whole surface of the vessel. The right-hand group of channels are organized independently from the other group of oblique lines. The channeling technique on both pieces was very similar: the individual channels were smoothed in very carefully at regular distances from one another. There is also another piece decorated with channelled lines (Cat. No. 33). These lines however are at greater distances from one another, so that their general effect is similar to linear ornamentation. 3. Impressed motifs. These ornaments occur on polished surfaces, sometimes with traces of post polishing. Such pieces can be found in the ceramics of both features (House 1. 1971 and pit 1. in trench III. 1976). It is a very characteristic feature of the fine ware. It occurs mostly on both sides of walls of bowls coming from either simple bowls or the upper parts of pedestalled vessels. Sherds provide a poor basis upon which to make such subtle distinctions. The heavily impressed lines were variously made by pointed or more frequently blunt tools made from wood or bone. The impressed lines are semicircular in cross section, with both thin and broad lines. The technique of impression involved a repeated, strong back and forth movement in the same line. The lines are straight with lustrous inner surfaces. Their character differs very much from the character of incised lines. The most important difference is that no clay was removed in the production of impressed lines while incision involved a carving out of the wet clay surface of the vessel. The impressed lines were produced by compressing the wet surface with the displaced clay sometimes forming two slight ridges along the two sides of the channel. (The best example of this is Cat. Nos. 42 — 43, of two adjoining fragments from the same vessel, with impressed broad lines both on the inner and the outer side, made by the same technique.) This decoration sometimes occurs on the outer side of walls (Cat. Nos. 26, 42: Pl. XIII,

le-d, Cat. Nos 46, 47, 55) or more frequently on the inner side of walls (Cat. Nos 27, 39, 40, 41, 42: Pl. XIII,

la-b, Cat. Nos 43, 45, 48) and in one case on both sides (Cat. Nos 42 — 43). This technique was used on burnished surfaces as well (Cat. Nos 27 and 42). The motifs are usually very simple: in general oblique straight lines, simple networks or fields of networks, and intersecting lines. Curvolinear motifs occur only on two or three sherds (Cat. Nos 33, 34, 34a). This technique represents a transition between the impressed line technique and true channeling. Another variation of this impressed technique is fine linear work scratched onto the surface before firing and probably after the lustrous polishing of the black surface was finished (Cat. No. 25). This technique cannot be termed incised motif in the same sense as the incision technique found in Transdanubian Linear pottery. The origin of these impressed linear motifs and of this technique is clear. Similar lines and ornaments (e. g. net-works) made by the very same techniques can be found in the material of the Körös-Starcevo culture of the Great Hungarian Plain. To demonstrate this striking similarity, we publish here two fragments of the Körös-Starcevo culture (Cat. Nos 49—50). Both fragments have finely impressed lines on the dark walls of vessels with polished surfaces. The chronological position of these and similar sherds in the Körös-Starcevo culture makes it very probable, that these motifs were in constant use during the whole Körös-Starcevo development. The earliest Linear Pottery people of Transdanubia (i. e. the material published here) knew of this technique and ad23