Madaras László – Tálas László – Szabó László szerk.: Tisicum - A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok Évkönyve 9. (1996)

Róbert Kertész: A New Site of the Northern Hungarian Plain Mesolithic Industry in the Jászság Area (Jászberény IV) (Az észak-alföldi mezolit ipar újabb lelőhelye a Jászságban — Jászberény IV)

On the basis of archeological and paleoecological data yielded by the Jászság model area the ethnodynamic processes in the Early and Middle Holocene can be reconstructed not only for this region proper but a prehistory valid also for other areas of the northern part of the Great Hungarian Plain can be modelled. On the basis of evidences available for us so far a chance to find new Mesolithic sites similar to those found in the Jászság is the greatest in those niches the ecological bases of which are resembling of those of the Jászság local basin. Therefore there is a chance to identify Mesolithic campsites in the northern part of the Great Hungarian Plain where there is a series of morphologically isolated smaller subsidence areas, created at the end of the Pleistocene and at the beginning of the Holocene, bordering the southern piedmont areas of Northern Mountain Range and of the NE range of the Carpathians: in the Heves flood-plain, the Borsod flood-plain, the Taktaköz, Rétköz, Bodrogköz, Bereg Plain and in the Szatmár Plain, within the zones with rich water supply. In these marginal basins there are greater chances to identify Mesolithic sites on the surface because of the thinner accumulation during the Holocene due to the close vicinity of the mountains. In these areas Early and Middle Holocene sediments are nearer to the recent soil zone and due to partly natural erosion partly to agruculture part of the Mesolithic sites can be found during field surveys. In the southern parts of the Great Hungarian Plain, however, Mesolithic culture layers are covered by sediments of greater thickness thus there chances to find the sites are restricted. We may expect to find further Mesolithic sites in those regions of the Northern Mountain Range where surface exposures of siliceous rocks are present and also along those river valleys of N—S direction which run over the alluvial fan plain of the northern part of the Great Hungarian Plain and connect two different major geographic regions, as well as in the sand regions of the Great Hungarian Plain (Fig. 4).

26 26 Kertész 1994b; 1995, 15; 1995a, 65-66; 1996, 19—20 27 Kertész 1995, 19 28 Kertész 1994, 26 29 Kertész 1994, 24; 1994a, 14. 19 30 Kertész 1991, 33; 1993, 84. 100 31 Kertész 1994, 27 Topography The site Jászberény IV is situated in the subsidence centre of the Jászság, at about 5 km SE of the town Jászberény in the SE part of the Réti field.

27 The recent Zagyva river runs E of the Jászberény Mesolithic site at a 2,4 kms' distance. The Mesolithic campsite is situated on the ancient levee directly along the Ancient Zagyva of the end of the Boreal and the beginning of the Atlantic periods (Fig. 5). Like in the vicinity of other Mesolithic settlements in the Jászság there are no significant differences of level near the site Jászberény IV either; the channels of the Ancient Zagyva filled in by now can be found at an average altitude of about 90 m, while the Mesolithic site is at an altitude of 91 m. That is the place chosen for settlement was at an elevation of hardly 1—2 m over the Early Holocene flood-plain level of the Ancient Zagyva, ín the same manner as we observed in the case of other Mesolithic sites in the Jászság. According to our opinion this localization of the Mesolithic sites in the Jászság on lower terrains near water (on flat banks, flood-plain islands) could be explained by paleoclimatic causes, that is by the dry and warm conditions of the Boreal period.

28 The site Jászberény IV is situated at the NE end of an irregular Y shaped levee of NW

—SE direction. This end of the levee is situated nearest to the Ancient Zagyva. The stratigraphic position of the culture layer of the site — on the basis of data known so far from the Jászság

29 — was most probably near the recent soil level. The Mesolithic site was disturbed by intensive cultivation which had made the archeological material to get to the surface. Settlement features of the Jászberény site are represented, like at the majority of other Jászság Mesolithic sites observed earlier,

30 by the concentration of the finds in a greyish spot of 15 m's diameter. For some time settlement features at the site Jásztelek I seemed to be different from this picture, where the archeological material was found concentrated over a larger, slightly oval greyish spot of 50x40 m.

31 However, in this case, too we already supposed the existence of several 34