Agria 39. (Az Egri Múzeum Évkönyve - Annales Musei Agriensis, 2003)
Domboróczki László: Radiokarbon adatok Heves megye újkőkori régészeti lelőhelyeiről
procured. It is something which can be considered a development, insofar as an independent means of farming was born displaying a more advanced level of technical competence. The northern edges of the Alföld can therefore be considered as an experimental region. Once it was clear that animal husbandry and agriculture had proved a success here, it was a success that others wanted to be part off. Consequently these new forms of agriculture were adopted on the Alföld as a whole, on the territories once occupied by the Körös Culture. Indeed, together with the new form of agriculture there were also those who followed the fashion for vessel manufacturing seen in the northern Alföld. So it was that the ALP spread across the plain. 159 As one can see, there are undisputed weaknesses in this theory, and it is for this reason that further research is necessary before we can be sure that such a hypothesis is indeed valid. There are of course finds which can be claimed to prove that the ALP Culture did not in fact develop from local roots. This is for example true in the case of animal bones. The study of animal bones which has gone on in recent years at the ALP settlements excavated in Heves County have brought some interesting results. According to I. Vörös, the proportion of smaller ruminants at the Szatmár Group site at Gubakút corresponds with the proportion of horned cattle. From this it would therefore appear that things had hardly changed since the Körös period. At the Gubakút site, however, similarly to the other ALP sites we excavated, 95% of the animal bones had come from domesticated animals, which was tantamount to a major change 160 as the proportion of hunted animals had fallen substantially. This is extremely interesting. One would not expect to find this in a Mezolithic community, dependent as it was on hunting and familiar with the locality where it had gained food and nourishment for many thousands of years. In contrast the people of the Szatmár Group lived entirely on the animals they had bred, and therefore to a greater degree than the people of the Körös Culture. It can be seen therefore that the adoption of new agricultural practices did not happen overnight. This group of people showed that by using this quazi survival package and adapting it to their strict and ancient regulatory practices, as manifested in their settlement structure (not absolutely necessary in the new territories), they were in all probability a colonizing people. As for anthropological material we have but a little. For the Szatmár period we only have the material found at Gubakút upon which to form an opinion. According to Zs. Zoffmann, who examined the skeletons, the Gubakút bones are at glance also graciles which, whilst not reminiscent at all of the late ALP Tiszadob and Bükk peoples, do resemble the people of the Körös Culture. 161 Based on the above, we believe that the people making up the core of the Szatmár Group were most probably a Körös Culture people from the Upper Tisza. Looking at the Heves County data we believe that the Neolithisation in the Northern Alföld was primarily the result of an influx of settlers. Taking into account the known data for the Mezolithic sites in the Jászság and Slovakia it is clear, looking at the mode of settlement, the agriculture, the beliefs and the material culture, that the Szatmár Group cannot be traced back to any Mezolithic precedents. Rather everything points to a relationship with the 159 For more on this topic, see footnote 85. 160 VÖRÖS István 1980. 56-57. 161 ZOFFMANN Zsuzsanna 2000. 106. 41
