Dani János - Hajdú Zsigmond - Nagy Emese Gyöngyvér szerk.: MÓMOSZ I. (Debrecen, 2001)

Sümegi Pál: A környezetrégészet problémái Magyarországon

PÁL SÜMEGI THE PROBLEMS OF ENVIRONMENTAL ARCHEOLOGY IN HUNGARY The author briefly surveys the history of the debates that have emerged around the so-called „time sciences" (history, archeology, geology, and palaentology) in the past one and a half centuries. After giving an outline of the opinions taken from the relevant international — mostly Englishlanguage — literature, he provides a detailed assessment of the related problems touched upon by articles published in Hungarian professional periodicals for the past decades. Following an in-depth theoretical and methodological introduction to the „environmental archeology" approach, he endeavors to outline the Holocene Age history of a specific region in the Carpathian Basin through the complex analysis (radiocarbon, geo-chemical, sedimentological, and malacological examinations, pollen analysis, etc.) of the drill-hole samples from a location in Northern Hungary (Kelemér-Kis-Mohos marsh). The essential conclusion he draws is that the changes implemented by human beings in the environment (caused by large scale grazing, deforestation agriculture, animal husbandry, other activities which involve burning material, etc.) leave behind traces which can be profoundly indicated and measured in the sediment layers of a marshy area). The author offers convincing evidence that a combination and comparison of environmental archeological data with the traditional archeological results based on the analysis of fossils of human culture can provide such a complex and sophisticated picture of the given historical period that would satisfy the requirements posed both by social and natural sciences. SÜMEGI PÁL JATE FÖLDTANI- ÉS ŐSLÉNYTANI TANSZÉK 6701 SZEGED PF. 658