A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 1981 (Debrecen, 1983)

Természettudomány - Szathmáry László: The Skeletal History of the Neolithic in the Carpathian Basin

László Szathmáry The Skeletal History of the Neolithic in the Carpathian Basin (An anthropological outline) Introduction The present study aims at giving a comprehensive view of the Neolithic skeletal remains of the Carpathian Basin by also making an attempt, starting from Preneolithic preliminaries, at the reconstruction of the main consecutive population movements in the Neolithic in those cases where the quantity or the quality of the finds provides an opportunity. The comprehensive studies published on the Neolithic hitherto established the correlations of the skeletal finds within the limits of the respective countries at the most and paid no regard to geographical regions. In Hungary, which is the central territory of the Carpathian Basin, it was Bartucz (1935, 1938) that first summed up the characteristics of the finds excavated until the 1930s. Thereafter Nemeskéri (1961) gave a brief summary of Neolithic remains. Farkas's dissertation (1975) contains the basic parameters of the Neolithic skeletons found in the southern part of the Hungarian Great Plain which is already a regional unity. Later Kiszely (1979), also Kiszely and Schwidetzky (1978) gave a survey of the Neolithic skeletons dug up in Hungary. Jungwirth and Kloiber (1973) in Austria, Chochol (1964) and Jelinek (1973, 1978) in Czechoslovakia also Necrasov and Cristescu (1965, 1973) and Necrasov (1979), in Rumania published anthropological data regarding the Carpathian Basin Neolithic, with claims to comparative or synthetic character. Recently Szathmáry (1980a) has offered a brief preliminary survey concerning the whole of the Carpathian Basin. Material and Method The 243 Neolithic skeleton remains in the Carpathian Basin were dug up in 46 findspots. 65 skeletons from the early period, 15 skletetons from the middle period and 163 skeletons from the late period available for the investigations (Table 1). The author analyses the skeletal finds relying upon the Upper-Palaeolithic and Mesolithic population historical antecedents and makes an attempt at the reconstruction of the position they occupied in Carpathian Basin ethnohistory. Consequently, the comparative analysis are constituted by the patterns and methods worked out through the examination of Preneolithic finds. Thus the author has primarily relied upon the studies of Boule and Vallois (1952), Coon (1948, 1962), Biggs (1958), Hooton (1947), Jelinek (1968), Korn and Smith (1959), Lipták (1962) and Vlcek (1961a, 1967) and upon Nemeskéri and Szathmáry's classification of Mesolithic skeletons (1978e) which must be completed by the results of Zivanovic (1975). 51