A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 2004 (Debrecen, 2005)

Régészet, ókortudomány - K. Hoffmann Zsuzsanna: New prehistoric anthropological finds from East Hungary

Zsuzsanna K. Zojfmann NEW PREHISTORIC ANTHROPOLOGICAL FINDS FROM EAST HUNGARY At rescue excavations related to road or highway constructions, or to other construction works implemented in Hungary, there have been unearthed such prehistoric burial grounds that used to be scattered individual burial places or minor segments of some larger, hitherto unexcavated, cemeteries. The archeological finds coming from these locations make it possible to classify the given objects as belonging to individual cultures, yet they do not seem to be significant enough to be involved in archeological publications immediately or in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, as these burials are exactly dated, and since their anthropological finds belong to the circle of such archeological cultures where the amount of anthropological finds seems by far less substantial than their actual importance, the publication of the information concerning the anthropological finds appears to be justifiable. The reason for this is that it seems desirable that, together with the already published finds, there should be such an anthropological series which would properly represent the individual groups of the given cultures. This paper introduces anthropological finds of this kind from the area of Tiszántúl [the Trans-Tibiscan Region]. The finds represent the population of five cultures dating back to the major time periods (the Neolithic, the Copper, and the Bronze Ages) of the Prehistoric Age, coming from as many as seven individual locations altogether. Despite the rather poor retention quality characteristic of almost the entire material under scrutiny, certain finds prove to carry fairly significant information. As a result, they furnish us with new data concerning the respective populations from the aspect of historical anthropology. In the case of the finds belonging to the Körös culture, it is primarily the skeletons from a common pit that prove to be noteworthy. It seems very likely that people who died of some disease in the form of an epidemic more or less simultaneously were buried in the same common pit. As regards the equally important anthropological finds belonging to the Tiszapolgári culture, they are remarkable for a different reason. In their case, it is not the burial technique that is special but the fact that, due to their availability, they have increased the quantity of the series representing this body of people to such an extent that now it is also eligible for the purpose of the Penrose bio-statistical analysis. According to the significant results of the analysis, and as it has been expected for some time, the Tiszapolgári population of the Early Copper Age, together with the population of the Central European linear pattern pottery, the North Great Plain Late Neolithic Lengyeli population, and the population of the Vinca culture of the Szerémség region, did belong to the circle of the autochthon population dating back to West Carpathian Neolithic bases, as outlined by the previously established Penrose analyses. 94