Petercsák Tivadar – Veres Gábor szerk.: Agria 44. (Az Egri Múzeum Évkönyve - Annales Musei Agriensis, 2008)

K. Zoffmann Zsuzsanna: A késő-bronzkori Kyjatice kultúra embertani leletei Ludas-Varjú dűlő lelőhelyről

Zsuzsanna K. Zoffmann Anthropological finds of the Late Bronze Age Kyjatice culture from the Ludas-Varjú dűlő site. The biritual cemetery fragment unearthed on the territory mostly contained inhumation burials beside the nine cremation burials. Infants and adults could equally be found among the individuals of the cremation burials, so this burial rite was used for every age group and probably for both sexes. The finds attest to uneven burning on the pyres, which may be due to the inappropriate building of the pyre, the uneven application of fuels or maybe the placing of the dead on the pyre. Their dressing for the rite or the covering of the pyre influenced the effect of the fire. - Every age group and the representatives of both sexes could be found in the inhumation burials as well. The grave in feature no. 1935 deserves special attention. A human skull was found beside the skeleton of an 18-22 year old male. The head seems to have been cut off after death although it cannot be stated with absolute certainty from the preserved skull fragments and in lack of the cervical vertebrae. This would suggest a skull hunt, the exhibition of the head of the killed enemy and keeping it at a certain eminent place and burying it later as a trophy; or on the contrary: the especially esteemed head/skull of a kin member could be placed in the grave beside the man who died at a young age. The colour and the condition of the skull suggest that before being buried, the skull was kept in the open for a longer period and the sun desiccated it. The relatively robust eury-dolichomorphous variant dominates in the series, although a lepto-dolichomorphous variant can also be recognised in a few cases with a characteristically downwards narrowing face. As the skeleton series from the biritual cemetery fragment of Ludas-Varjú dűlő is the only series of the culture which has no analogue to which it could be compared, it cannot be decided from the very fragmentary series of items if the mixture rate of the two observed type variants represent the complete population. It is possible that the representatives of other types will also occur in other population groups of the Kyjatice culture. 35