Gyöngyössy Márton (szerk.): Perspectives on the Past. Major Excavations in County Pest (Szentendre, 2008)
(6100-4500 ВС) Settlement remains and burials of the Middle Neolithic were uncovered at seven locations in the Abony area investigated between 2003 and 2005. The sites can be assigned to the late Alföld Linear Pottery and Szakálhát group, and all of them yielded enormous quantities of finds. One of the most interesting was Site 60, lying between kilometres 79 and 80 of Road 4 bypassing Abony in an area called Serkeszék-dűlő. A small settlement on the bank of a one-time stream was established here during the Middle Neolithic. A north to south aligned ditch system _______ _____ was identified by the settlement’s edge, which had perhaps accommodated a wattle fence. The ditch narrows in one spot, beside which lay a pit yielding a rich assortment of finds: lavishly decorated pottery, bone and stone tools, a polished boar tusk plaque and a human skeleton laid prone. The narrowing section perhaps marked the entrance, while the unusual pit (Feature 148) was most likely a sacrificial pit associated with the entrance. There is only indirect evidence for the houses. The various patches of trodden clay marking the one-time occupation surface and the countless burnt daub fragments bearing imprints of twigs indicate that the occupants lived in above-ground buildings constructed around a framework of wooden posts with wattleand-daub walls, resembling the houses known from other sites of this period. There were no separate cemeteries in the Middle Neolithic. The deceased were buried in the settlement’s unoccupied, abandoned areas. Seventeen burials were uncovered among the refuse and clay extraction pits of the site. The de- 3. ceased were laid to rest on their left side in a crouched position with the knees drawn up. The graves were oriented southeast to north-west. Three burials contained beads made from Spondylus shell. The Middle Neolithic sites in the area all yielded a rich variety of finds. The countless pottery vessels included large storage jars with a human face incised on the neck. Ladles and loom weights were likewise made from clay. Polished stone axes, chisels, quern stones, chipped blades of obsidian and chert, and needles, awls and polishers made from various animal bones represent the tools and implements of daily life. Owing to their geographic location, the Neolithic settlements in the Cegléd-Abony area maintained close ties with the Neolithic communities of Transdanubia. The most eloquent example is the cylindrical face pot from Site 60, whose body is decorated with a pattern typical for the Neolithic cultures of Transdanubia, while the M motif of the face depiction was a symbol used by the peoples living in the Great Hungarian Plain. Ágnes Kovács A Neolithic settlement at Abony
