Tálas László szerk.: The late neolithic of the Tisza region (1987)
Öcsöd-Kováshalom (P. Raczky)
P. RACZKY Reconstruction of a vessel with a composite decoration consisting of straw pieces arranged into a curvolinear pattern applied on a background of bitumen coating and red complementing paint. Early Tisza culture. H: 11.8 cm [8] sides of this fence corresponded to the northwest-southeast and northeast-southwest orientation of the houses; its opening lay roughly in the middle of its southeastern side. The area enclosed by the fence excavated at Öcsöd offers, for the first time, a reliable starting point for estimating the size of a Tisza settlement. In this case the area covered by the settlement was 1470 m 2 ; taking the number of houses in contemporary use as 4 to 6, and assuming that there were 5 occupants to a building, we arrive at a population of 20 to 30 souls, implying a population density of 136-204 persons per hectare, a figure that harmonizes with estimates of 119.6 to 200 persons per hectare for Near Eastern sites (HASSAN 1981, 66). A roughly 0.5 ha large area can be assumed to have been similarly densely populated at Öcsöd, giving a population number of 65 to 100 persons, with 13 to 20 contemporaneous houses. The population density of the approximately 2.5 ha large single-layer horizontal settlement complementing the 3 main residential foci was obviously lower. Halving the value obtained for the area enclosed by the fence, a total of 33 to 50 houses and a population of 165 to 250 souls can be assumed for the singlelayer settlement part, suggesting about 46 to 70 houses and a 68 Vessel with special decoration consisting of straw pieces arranged into a recitilinear pattern and set in distinct panels applied on a background of bitumen coating and red complementing paint. Early Tisza culture. H: 11.6 cm [9] population of 230 to 250 persons for the 3 ha area occupied simultaneously. An estimate of the population of the 3 ha area using Kramer's figure of 119.6 persons per hectare gives a population of 358.8 souls, while Hassan's formula (P = 146 \A) yields a total population of 248.2 (HASSAN 1981, 66-67). Other possible estimates are based on the observation that only about 60% of the settlement area was used for habitation. In this case the 136-204 persons per hectare estimated for the area enclosed by the fence gives a population of 246 to 367 for 60% of the entire 3 ha area. These figures correlate nicely with the population size estimated on the basis of the number of contemporaneous houses. The population size of the 3 ha area (230-350 persons) gives an average population density of 76.6—116.6 persons per hectare for the entire site. The estimates for the population and settlement size of Öcsöd harmonize with ethnoarchaeological observations made around Aliabad in Iran where villages rarely exceeded 3.4 ha and had a population density of 97 persons per hectare. However, investigations in that area have clearly demonstrated that settlement size and population density varies considerably from region to region in South-West Asia and thus cannot be direct-
